


dark under the lamp

by wakeupnew



Category: Sungkyunkwan Scandal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Get Together, M/M, Mystery, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:01:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28127289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wakeupnew/pseuds/wakeupnew
Summary: Yong-ha wanted to know everything, always. His curiosity was insatiable; his fervor to dig up what was buried had drawn him into trouble many times over the course of his life. But the truth was that Gu Yong-ha wanted to know everyone’s secrets but his own.Gu Yong-ha and Moon Jae-shin solve a troubling mystery together, and in so doing, find other answers too.
Relationships: Gu Yong Ha/Moon Jae Shin
Comments: 20
Kudos: 27
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kitsunealyc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunealyc/gifts).



> The stories told in the interstitials are drawn from Korean folklore, though the details vary in the telling. See end note for source acknowledgements and for content warnings. Happy Yuletide, kitsunealyc! I loved your request.

Gu Yong-ha shivers, crouched low in the driving rain. He has done any number of foolish things in his life, but this may very well be the most foolhardy of them all. 

He does not regret it.

“Go!” he shouts at the silhouette looming over him, its head backlit by sickly red light. Moon Jae-shin lies in a heap in the street behind him, one hand still weakly tugging a fistful of Yong-ha’s skirts. 

Yong-ha draws a rattling breath as the figure bends down. “ _Leave_ ,” he snarls deep in his chest, and he remembers —

* * *

Half-formed memories of glossy black hair woven into an intricate eonjun meori. The rustle of fabric. A set of jeweled hairpins. A hand softly touching his head; a low laugh. And a beautifully-carved elegant wooden hand, the color of ginkgo bark.

Yong-ha hardly remembers. Those scraps are hard-fought, scraped together over two decades, pieces barely sketched with the ghost of someone lost long ago.

No, that isn’t what he is searching for.

Sixteen years ago — that is closer.

* * *

Yong-ha’s father slapped a hand down on his desk. "Boy! Have you listened to a word I've said?" he demanded.

Yong-ha had not. This was a rant that he could recite in his sleep — he was an unfilial child, he showed constant disrespect, he did what he wanted all across the markets of Hanseong. Something much more interesting was happening just outside the doors.

Yong-ha tuned out his father’s blustering and listened to the intriguingly unfamiliar voice from outside. "You cannot continue to run wild across the city," the man said, low and angry. 

Whoever was being lectured said nothing, but there was a sullen quality to the silence. Yong-ha craned his neck to hear better.

"You have tutoring sessions to attend. You will have responsibilities to consider one day." A yangban family, then, most likely.

There was a very quiet scoff.

"I can't even leave you with servants, can I?" the man continued. "You'll evade them and slip away again. And I don't have time to take you home now, so you will have to come inside with me. Behave yourself." Footsteps crunched.

Yong-ha took that as a sign to prepare himself — he straightened and allowed his father's lecture to filter back in. 

“You’re your mother’s son,” his father was complaining, which would be interesting if he ever offered any information about Yong-ha's mother beyond that.

Yong-ha calculated: if they were about to welcome visitors, his father couldn’t shout. "Oh?" Yong-ha asked innocently. "What was she like?"

"Why you—!" his father started, voice strangled, and then there was a knock at the door of his father's office.

He harrumphed and rose to his feet. "You, here," he hissed, pointing emphatically at the fine carpet beside him, and Yong-ha sighed and then went to stand by his father's side. 

His father stared down at him in the manner that he thought was imperious and intimidating, but actually made him look like he had indigestion. "This is an important connection to be made. If the conversation goes well, this jumped-up Soron minister could open doors to our couriers all across Hanseong. You _will_ honor the Gu family name."

A powerful Soron minister? That was rare, and interesting.

But Yong-ha understood his role. He was to demonstrate fine manners in greeting guests and stand by his father's side without fidgeting, to indicate that Merchant Gu was to be trusted in business matters — after all, he had a well-educated and filial son who would one day take over the family business. And surely it didn’t hurt that Yong-ha wore beautiful clothing made from the silks sold by his father — a walking, talking advertisement for the business’s wares.

It was all dreadfully dull. He would have much rather been hunting for treasures through the dusty aisles of his father's warehouses, or singing bawdy songs learned from the cooks, or slowly seeing how red he could make his tutor's face with unassailable questions. His father always made him leave these meetings before they reached the interesting part, where they bargained over payment for the visitor in return for the visitor doing what his father wanted.

"I mean it," his father said darkly, and then he looked to the door and said, "Come," and a man and a boy entered, followed at a respectful distance by one of Yong-ha's father's servants.

"Minister Moon and his son," said the servant.

Minister Moon looked harried, with hard lines set around his eyes and mouth — without a word spoken, Yong-ha knew this man was the voice he had overheard in the courtyard, and that Yong-ha was right: he was yangban. The silk of his hanbok was of exceptional quality, though terribly boring. Yong-ha didn’t understand having money and choosing to spend it on robes in two shades of dark blue with no embellishments.

The boy, however, didn’t look like any yangban Yong-ha had ever seen. He was perhaps of an age with Yong-ha, but that was where the similarities both began and ended. He was dressed in filthy hemp rags and his hair was wild about his sullen face; his knuckles were bloody, as though he'd been brawling, and he was smeared with dirt.

Yong-ha sneaked another look at the other boy as they all bowed. While he looked like a child thief from Banchon, he was apparently the son of a Soron minister.

That was much more interesting than their fathers exchanging strained pleasantries.

Minister Moon bowed and said, "I apologize, Gu Si-min-ssi; my son was on his way home to change into appropriate attire."

"Ahh, of course, of course," said Yong-ha's father to the obvious lie. He didn't see it in his rush to reassure but Yong-ha did: the son rolled his eyes at Minister Moon.

"Children — I understand. My own son is of a similar age." Yong-ha's father gestured impatiently at him, and, on cue, Yong-ha politely bowed again. "Please, join me."

When Minister Moon came to the table, his son didn’t follow. The minister paused, then glanced back and said, "Jae-shin," with the edge of a man at the end of his rope. Moon Jae-shin scuffed his feet along the expensive imported carpet all the way to the table, where he slumped down at his father's side with a heavy thump.

While their fathers exchanged dull pleasantries and well wishes that Yong-ha was old enough to know neither of them truly meant, Yong-ha tilted his head and curiously studied the other boy across the table. Despite his lazy posture, his eyes were sharp under that tangled mop of hair — and they were trained on Yong-ha.

Moon Jae-shin eyed him back, gaze sweeping up and down Yong-ha's beautiful jeogori with open disdain, and then lifted his chin and stared at the wall above Yong-ha's left shoulder.

How dare he! Yong-ha had been selecting his own silks since he was seven years old, for five whole years now, and he knew that his choices were impeccable. He couldn’t decide if he was more incredulous over being summarily dismissed or fascinated that this boy didn’t seem to care for societal rules.

He certainly had an impressive blank face.

"Ah, yes, I understand that it was a fine year for trade," Minister Moon was saying, with a faint air of puzzlement. Yong-ha glanced at his own father to find him still grinning gormlessly — he plainly did not hear the way that the Soron minister had said the word 'trade.' 

Yong-ha sighed under his breath and squirmed with boredom. The fact that his father didn’t immediately swat his knee under the table meant he wasn’t being closely observed. Still, he was no fool, so he waited until the two men were both insincerely laughing at a joke before he stared at Moon Jae-shin and deliberately crossed his eyes.

Moon Jae-shin's eye twitched, then his expression returned to studied boredom.

A reaction! Yong-ha carefully curbed his smirk and patiently waited until Moon Jae-shin's gaze flicked down for a moment. Then he winked and stuck out his tongue.

Moon Jae-shin settled his mouth in a firm, unfriendly line.

This wouldn't do. Gu Yong-ha would not be ignored. It was one of his great character flaws, if one were to listen to his tutor, his father, or the nanny who raised him.

Yong-ha did not, naturally.

He sneaked a sideways glance at his father. He and Minister Moon were still politely inquiring after each other's families. His father had the gleam in his eye that meant he thought he had spotted a business opportunity — Yong-ha could have leaped up and down playing a kkwaenggwari and his father still wouldn't have looked at him.

Perfect.

Yong-ha glanced down at the table. His father had left a stack of writing materials and manuscripts on the table, to silently boast of his industriousness. There was ink in the well of the inkstone. He surreptitiously dipped one fingertip into the well, then flicked it across the table.

Moon Jae-shin’s eyebrows furrowed and Yong-ha beamed. Carefully eyeing his father again, he waited for the opportune moment and then — he flicked a constellation of tiny ink dots at Moon Jae-shin.

Moon Jae-shin reached out and gripped the edge of the table so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Minister Moon glanced down at his son, then over at Yong-ha, and Yong-ha treated him to his very finest polite face.

The second that the minister turned back to Yong-ha’s father, Yong-ha smeared three fingers liberally with ink and then tossed it at Moon Jae-shin. With unerring accuracy, black flecks landed squarely across his face and chest.

“ _You!_ ” Moon Jae-shin cried, and he lunged across the table with a clatter of brushes and scrape of furniture and shattering porcelain.

Yong-ha yelped with alarm and flung himself behind the nearest object — which, unfortunately, happened to be his father.

Their fathers roared their names at the same time.

In the ensuing chaos, Yong-ha's father finally realized that the Minister Moon who he had been about to attempt to bribe was not the Minister Moon who was minister of trade, but, instead, the Minister Moon who was minister of justice.

It was, all in all, a very good day for Yong-ha.

* * *

Somewhere distant, Yong-ha knows rain is no longer streaming down his face as someone leans over him.

Sixteen years ago is part of the story but it is not the answer, either. Nine years ago: that will find what he needs.

* * *

“As young master of the household, I should be allowed to enter every area of the estate,” Yong-ha proclaimed, waving a bottle to emphasize his point. Soju splashed the embroidered green sleeve of his jeogori and he groaned and set the bottle down on the table — after missing twice — and then patted ineffectually at wet silk.

Jae-shin leaned across the table and swiped Yongha’s soju. They had passed the point of pouring into cups some time earlier — not that Jae-shin ever stood on ceremony, or that their fellow patrons in the public house were likely to judge them at this hour of the night. The lamps were beginning to burn low. The other tables nearby were all laughing raucously or playing closely-fought games of dice. 

Moon Jae-shin swigged directly from the bottle, his swallow unreasonably steady for a teenager as drunk as he ought to be. 

Yongha’s face was warm. He pressed his hands to his heated cheeks and forehead. “Don’t drink all of it,” he complained.

Jae-shin shot him an unimpressed look and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He sprawled with one knee up and his arm splayed casually across it. “You can just buy another one.”

“That’s — that’s not the point.”

“What is?”

Moon Jae-shin had no right to sound so long-suffering. Yong-ha always had a point — he was very pointed.

“I’m wounded, Geol-oh,” he cried, grinning.

“Don’t call me that,” said Jaeshin, with the exhausted air of someone who knew he would be ignored.

Yong-ha tilted his head suggestively. “I have a very fine point.”

Jae-shin raised his eyebrows, dubious. He had, as ever, an unfairly handsome face, even while he was being insulting. 

Yong-ha extended an imperious hand across the table and Jae-shin rolled his eyes but passed back the soju. “My point is that my father has no right to keep me from this mysterious outbuilding. I should know what’s in it — it’s rightfully mine.” He took a deep mouthful of soju and nearly spit it out as an indignant thought occurred to him. “Does he think he can keep secrets from me? I am Gu Yong-ha!”

“He had you beaten for trying to sneak in three years ago,” Jae-shin pointed out. 

“This will be different,” said Yong-ha, magnanimously handing the soju back. “I’m much better at sneaking now.”

“You mean you’re better at bribing now,” said Jae-shin, but Yong-ha knew him well enough to see the amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth, the ease in his loose posture.

“There’s only one way to settle this,” Yong-ha said, determined, and Moon Jae-shin, who was really a reasonably good friend, drained the bottle of soju and sat up.

*

Sidestepping the gates to avoid detection had seemed like a brilliant idea until Yong-ha found himself staring up at the high wall surrounding his own home. 

He swayed back and forth on his feet, warm with drink, as he thoughtfully considered his options.

A cloud scudded across the moon overhead. From beside him, Jae-shin’s voice said, “What does the great Gu Yong-ha have to say now?”

“There is a solution to every mountain that must be climbed.” He hiccuped.

“Come on,” said Jae-shin, “before your father’s guards come along.” Yong-ha squinted at the strangely hunched dark silhouette standing beside him and finally realized that Jae-shin had bent down and offered his laced fingers.

Yong-ha had many favorite things about Moon Jae-shin (the snarl that he occasionally employed to prevent thieves from attempting to target the two of them, the hilarious way that he hiccuped around pretty girls, the sound of his laughter), but one of his very favorites was Jae-shin’s complete disinterest in being a voice of reason. It was a truly exceptional quality in a lifelong companion.

“You’re an excellent friend, Geol-oh,” Yong-ha proclaimed happily, patting his shoulder, and he settled one foot into Jae-shin’s hands.

Jae-shin boosted him up with the strength that still surprised Yong-ha occasionally — as handsome and tall as he was now, Yong-ha remembered well the scrawny boy he’d first met. 

“Would you — you have to _reach_ , hurry up,” Jae-shin grunted, staggering, and Yong-ha scrambled up onto the flat top of the wall with great dignity.

“The view is nice from up here,” Yong-ha gloated.

“Shut up and get in there,” Jae-shin said from the darkness below, his voice low, and Yong-ha tipsily saluted in his general direction and then promptly lost his balance and toppled over the opposite side of the wall.

Yong-ha hit the ground flat on his back, hard enough to knock the breath from his body. He wheezed and laid in the bushes of his father’s courtyard, his head spinning with drink. What was the providence of that last bottle of soju? 

A dark figure appeared at the top of the wall above him. Yong-ha’s heart stuttered in alarm — he yelped and started to scramble to his feet, but then Moon Jae-shin nimbly leaped down from the top of the wall and landed beside him with a soft thump. 

“You’re loud,” said Jae-shin judgmentally, leaning over him. “What did you do to yourself?”

“I’m admiring the stars,” Yong-ha said. Jae-shin rolled his eyes with such vigor that it was visible even in the moonlight, and he hauled Yong-ha up.

Yong-ha spun several times before finally accepting that he wouldn’t be able to see the state of the back of his jeogori. “Geol-oh, help me; is it stained?” he said, now dizzy on his feet, and Jae-shin roughly brushed a perfunctory hand over his back — not nearly enough to dislodge any dirt that was there, Yong-ha was certain.

“Aish! Is it ruined?” he said, turning again, and Jae-shin caught his arm.

“It’s fine.” He sounded dismissive and was undoubtedly lying, but then he plucked a leaf out of Yong-ha’s hair and put his gat back on his head — albeit with more force than strictly necessary — so Yong-ha decided to forgive him for it. “Where is this outbuilding?”

Yong-ha may have been slightly tipsy — only slightly — but he could have worn a path to the outbuilding in his sleep. It was tucked away behind the main house. A small, unassuming building all the more interesting for its plainness among all the signs of his father’s ostentatious taste. 

For as long as Yong-ha could remember, a hook low in his stomach had pulled, drawing him to stand before this door again and again. 

His father wanted nothing to do with the outbuilding or its contents. He refused to speak on what was inside and few of the servants Yong-ha had bribed seemed to know anything — a highly unusual state of affairs for the Gu servants, who could usually be relied upon as a source of all gossip and information in exchange for a few judiciously-slipped nyang. 

The old nanny who’d raised him had been one of the few who offered any answers to his questions, and they were never satisfactory. “It is a cursed place, dolyeonnim,” she would say, her lined face quivering with distress. Her stories varied — sometimes a powerful gwisin haunted it by night. Others, a vengeful gumiho was trapped inside and would be freed if the door was opened. Once, she told him that the outbuilding hid a one-legged gae dokkaebi who would snap off the heads of inquisitive little boys.

On that particular occasion, Yong-ha was sure, she had simply been sick of all his questions, but as for her other explanations … there was always sincere terror in her voice when she spoke of ghosts and fox-women. Yong-ha had cultivated healthy fears after those years of bloodcurdling tales, which did not start and end with the outbuilding. He declined to investigate any and all strange outdoor noises at night.

His father had only snorted when Yong-ha had asked. “Superstitious old bat,” he had said. “It’s not for you. That’s all you need to know.”

Once, the old woman sneaked too much soju with her afternoon meal and her gaze turned misty after she told the story again of an ancient gumiho trapped in the outbuilding. “Your mother was a great beauty,” she had said, shaking her head — a strange non sequitur.

Yong-ha had immediately stopped pretending he was paying any attention to the characters he was supposed to be practicing. “You knew my mother?” he had demanded.

The old woman had nodded, her eyes burning with fervor. “Her hand was taken by a jealous gumiho long before she ever came to this place. Beware the gumiho, dolyeonnim! It remembers and one day, it will come to find you next!”

The cook had come across them, then, and angrily upbraided the old woman for frightening the young master with monstrous tales. Yong-ha had been marched off to his father, and his old nanny had been gone the very next day. 

“Did a gumiho take my mother’s hand?” Yong-ha had asked his father. A wooden hand, carved with beautiful rings and bracelets, jewels inset. He remembered that.

“Would you stop asking questions if I said that it did?” his father had barked, but there had been a strange note of real fear in his expression — like a pebble stuck in a shoe, slowly digging deeper and deeper into the skin.

Throughout Yong-ha’s entire memory, the outbuilding had been guarded at all hours by at least one strong servant who never stepped inside. Yong-ha’s most serious plot to breach its door ended in disaster when he was sixteen. The resultant beating had left him sore for weeks and the proverbial wet blanket was thrown over his curiosity. 

For a time.

Yong-ha passed through the dark courtyard, Jae-shin’s soft footsteps trailing behind. The moon was already beginning to hang low and the sun would rise in only a few hours’ time, and the estate was silent and still in the predawn darkness. 

Jae-shin hissed sharply, and then he snatched Yong-ha’s arm and yanked him behind a tree. When Yong-ha began to protest, Jae-shin pushed him back against the gnarled tree trunk and clapped a hand over his mouth. “Be quiet, idiot,” he muttered.

Yong-ha gave serious consideration to the idea of licking him, but before he could, Jae-shin said, “Is there just the one guard?”

He was a lean line of heat pressed to Yong-ha’s chest and left hip and knee. His breath lightly rattled the bead string of Yong-ha’s gat and ghosted across his ear.

Yong-ha did touch his tongue to Jae-shin’s palm, then. 

Jae-shin yanked his hand back as if it had been struck by an arrow. Yong-ha said, evenly, “Sometimes two. Fewer by night.”

“Wait here.” Jae-shin stepped back. For all that it was a balmy summer evening, the air felt chilled with his warmth gone. “ _Don’t_ move.”

Yong-ha raised his hands placatingly. “Okay, okay.”

Jae-shin slipped away into darkness more easily than would have been possible for most yangban heirs. Moon Jae-shin, though, as Yong-ha had long discovered, was no ordinary spoiled son of a noble family. He had always been exceptional at making himself disappear. 

Yong-ha glanced around the wizened old tree trunk. There was no sign of Jae-shin, but the servant, a man named Chil-bok, stood looking bored in the dim circle of light cast by a lantern. Behind him the windows of the little outbuilding blazed with light, as they did every night.

Yong-ha’s irritation with his father rose again. “He thinks he can wave secrets under the nose of Gu Yong-ha!” he clucked to himself, and then the servant shifted his weight and Yong-ha hurriedly ducked back behind the tree.

Insects buzzed softly in the night and an owl hooted nearby. Yong-ha waited impatiently. His head was beginning to clear though his mouth still tasted of soju, but even with the rush of liquid courage fading, he felt no regret. Yong-ha would enroll as a vaunted Sungkyunkwan scholar in the guise of a yangban in the morning. Even if Yong-ha was caught tonight, his father had invested too much in his education and his false family tree to send his only son off to Sungkyunkwan as anything less than his best. And he could neither enter the walls of the university nor send servants after Yong-ha to upbraid him, not without losing face and risking the reveal of their fraudulent lineage. 

No, there was no time more auspicious than tonight.

The owl screeched again, and Yong-ha most certainly did not jump. Ghosts and goblins and foxes undoubtedly had better places to be than the estate of his father, where nothing of interest ever happened unless Yong-ha prodded it into motion first. There was nothing in that outbuilding other than something earthly that his father wanted to hide from him, Yong-ha told himself firmly, and tonight he would finally find out what it was.

“Huh? _Hey!_ ” cried Chil-bok, and his running footsteps crashed away.

Yong-ha was very patient and paused for five entire breaths before he peered out from around the tree trunk. Chil-bok was nowhere in sight. The little outbuilding was alone — _Yong-ha_ was alone. 

Yong-ha, who was a model of self-restraint, waited two breaths more before he crept out and sprinted across the open space to the outbuilding door. He had pictured this moment so many times: a dramatic meaningful pause at the door, his hand slowly pulling it open to reveal what treasures it held.

In the interest of hiding safely inside before Chil-bok returned, reality meant that Yong-ha threw the door open and flung himself through before he could so much as glance through the open doorway.

The first thing he saw was a floating white figure.

Terror flashed through him like lightning on a hot summer night. He backpedaled frantically, a scream trapped in his throat — and thumped into a body behind him in the doorway. This time he opened his mouth to scream aloud, but a familiar hand slapped down over his mouth.

“What ar—” Moon Jae-shin started, and then Yong-ha _felt_ him notice the ghost. The entire body behind him went rigid.

“Gwisin!” Yong-ha tried to yelp, muffled by Jae-shin’s hand. He was horrified to feel Jae-shin pushing him into the room instead of pulling him out of it — what did Geol-oh think he was doing?! Yong-ha bucked wildly to try to escape.

“Stop fighting me — stop it, you punk, he’s coming back!” Jae-shin hissed, and he shoved Yong-ha inside with enough force that he went staggering forward and landed on his hands and knees directly in front of the white figure.

Quivering with terror, Yong-ha slowly lifted his eyes from the hovering hem of the hanbok. 

It was a hanbok hung upon the wall, not the floating funereal robes of a transparent legless ghost. It was beautifully crafted and sewn — pure white silk, expensively sourced and faded with age.

Yong-ha pushed himself up and sat back on his heels. “Aigoo, that was frightening.” He shook out his shoulders and shuddered. “I felt my soul leave my body.” 

Standing by the closed door and clearly listening beyond it, Jae-shin waved a hand for him to be quiet. Yong-ha turned away from him and finally took in the place that had captured his imagination so thoroughly as a child.

It was, it turned out, disappointingly mundane — a small, warmly-lit storage room with shelving units lining the walls. A low table sat in the center of the room with journals and manuscripts stacked neatly atop it, a cushion set in front as if someone had just laid down their work briefly and would return soon. Something about the blue cushion pricked at Yong-ha’s sharp memory.

Jae-shin padded across the storeroom on nearly silent feet. “The servant is coming back. Keep your voice down,” he muttered. “He won’t come in here?”

“My father has threatened to chop the head off of any servant who enters this building,” said Yong-ha, low. “What did you do to Chil-bok?”

“Rolled a rock in the direction of your father’s largest storeroom,” Jae-shin said, and Yong-ha gave him an appreciative breath of a, “Ha!” even as his gaze flicked across the shelves. There was so much to catalogue — vases, lacquered boxes, several musical instruments, writing tools, and endless books and carefully-bound reams of paper. Several large intricately-carved trunks stood by the door. 

Jae-shin crouched beside him and looked up at the hanbok hung on the wall. “You thought this was a gwisin?” he said, a thread of amusement in his voice. 

He was laughing at Yong-ha, which was rich — Yong-ha had felt Jae-shin momentarily seize with fear behind him in the doorway, too. “It was alarming,” Yong-ha said, but it was delivered absently as he rose and slowly paced the length of the nearest shelf. He floated his fingers through the air just above the layer of dust coating it. “What is all of this?”

“You don’t know?”

Yong-ha shook his head. “Why isn’t any of this in the other storerooms?” he mused to himself. The quality of items looked fine, but not nearly enough so to explain a closely-guarded outbuilding placed away from the rest of the estate — to justify the old woman’s bloodcurdling stories or his father’s stink of fear when he’d ordered Yong-ha beaten for attempting to breach the door.

Plainly, no one had opened the door in a long time. The air was heavy and stale. Dust thickly blanketed the room — every book, every shelf, every fine trinket. Yong-ha itched to draw lines in the dust, to pick up and handle every item in the building to mark that he had been here. If the storeroom remained sealed, how were the lanterns lit every night?

Jae-shin came to the opposite side of the shelf, bending down to inspect its treasures. “Painting supplies, a gayageum, novels, poetry—”

“Rouge, combs, hair oils,” Yong-ha recited as he passed each item, and then he paused. 

A set of hairpins sat at the end of the shelf. Neatly bundled together with a ribbon, they glinted with jewels. 

Once, Yong-ha had imagined that his mother lived in this building. His father had refused to answer questions about the outbuilding in much the same way he had refused to speak of his dead wife, and as a young boy Yong-ha had had a wild idea that if he could only open the door, his mother would step out and welcome him. 

When he grew older, he came to understand that that had been the fleeting fancy of a child. No person lived in the outbuilding — for one thing, a young Gu Yong-ha had once spent three days watching it avidly and no one had ever opened the door, much less supplied food and water to a prisoner within.

But these were unmistakably the hairpins he had been allowed to play with as a young child.

Yong-ha picked them up. They felt small poised between his thumb and forefinger, like they ought to have grown with his hands. He remembered wielding them as if they were tiny swords — a laughing voice.

“Yong-ha,” said Jae-shin, still pitched low to escape detection but with the air of something that had been repeated several times. 

Yong-ha looked up and found Jae-shin peering at him through the shelf, his eyebrows furrowed. “These were my mother’s,” Yong-ha said, exchanging a bewildered glance with Jae-shin. He looked around. “I think all of it belonged to her.”

Jae-shin paused, then stood up straight and began to come around the shelf. Yong-ha ignored him and, absently tucking the hairpins into his sleeve, went to the table in the center of the storeroom and knelt down on the blue cushion. He ran a finger over the embroidery. The richness of the blue had faded with time, but the embroidered spray of plum blossoms touched a spark of memory.

Inkstones, porcelain water droppers, and brushes — including several in a beautiful wooden brush holder — were tossed across the table as if the writer had stepped away for a moment and expected to return soon. There was a disordered spread of papers in front of Yong-ha, with the topmost sheet only partially filled in slapdash shaky calligraphy that ended abruptly in the middle of a character. He sent the brush atop it rolling away and picked up the sheet.

 _I cannot say_ , the author had written. _There is much I should have done. It is too late now. I regret that I have sealed you from what is rightfully yours but you will be safe with Gu. It is my fondest wish that you lead a happy, ordinary life. You must know—_ The note ended with a harsh brushstroke, unrecognizable as any character.

Yong-ha flipped the sheet over to check its blank back, then scooped up one sheet and another. Characters leaped out at him — son, caution, power — but no page was immediately recognizable as the successor to the one he had read first. 

Jae-shin slowly sank down across from him. Before he could ask, Yong-ha shoved the half-written sheet of paper into his hands and then kept digging through the stack in front of him. There were books, too — _The Cloud Dream of the Nine_ and several other famous novels, but most notably several ancient manuscripts with battered black covers, arrayed as if someone had been frantically reading and taking notes from them.

“Is this addressed to you?” Jae-shin asked. 

“Aren't most letters of any interest?" Yong-ha answered reflexively, but it didn’t make sense — what was rightfully his? He was the only son of wealthy merchant Gu Si-min. What was he entitled to that he hadn’t already received?

Yong-ha pushed the books across the table at Jae-shin and then snatched up a random page covered in his mother’s writing. _There was so much I wanted to tell you,_ she wrote. _You must be clever. Understand who can be trusted. Do not hesitate to hide yourself when you must._

From the corner of his eye, Yong-ha saw Jae-shin jerk in reaction to something. Yong-ha looked over at him, grateful for the opportunity to put down the page that was searing into his whirling mind, and Jae-shin slowly raised his eyes to him. “These books are about magic.”

 _Magic?_ Yong-ha shuddered with instinctive revulsion. “Truly? Magic?” 

“Remedies for a long illness and the effects of sealing one's spirit.” Jae-shin flipped one book around to show him. The pages were so old they were beginning to crumble, the ink faded with age and hangul letters written in an unsteady hand, interspersed with strange circle motifs and diagrams of spidery bodies with outstretched arms and legs. 

“One of the others was open to a section gathering old legends.” 

Yong-ha swallowed; inhaled shallowly, rose onto his knees, and leaned across the table. “Never mind, never mind, stop looking at all those boring books,” he said hurriedly, pushing more letter pages at Jae-shin. “Haven’t you had enough of studying already? We only recently finished the Sungkyunkwan entrance exams.” 

Jae-shin slowly reached up to take the pages that Yong-ha had slapped against his chest. “I didn’t study.”

Yong-ha wagged a finger at him. “Bragging doesn’t become you, Geol-oh.” His eyes alighted again on the book that Jae-shin had held out to him, its diagrams and its implications, and he cast about desperately for something else. "Aha, the trunks! This is where the true treasures will lie."

By 'true treasures' he meant fine clothing, which Jae-shin seemed to understand, from his look of utter disinterest. 

Yong-ha scrambled to the trunk nearest the door and threw open its lid to the faint scents of musty fabric and his mother’s half-forgotten perfume. Tucked inside, atop a bed of neatly folded fabrics, was a cherrywood lacquered box. The box top, carved intricately with trailing vines and flower petals, shone like a beacon. Not a speck of dust had dared to alight on the lid over the years.

The flowers carved into the lid, Yong-ha realized, were mugunghwa, signifying resilience, perseverance — and immortality.

He recoiled from the box.

Jae-shin’s muffled voice asked a question. 

Yong-ha both knew and didn’t know what he was looking at — didn’t want to know. He rested his elbows on the rim of the trunk and stared inside.

Reaching for the box and what lay inside felt like reaching out for his own hand. The hypnotic drum of his heartbeat echoed between his ears. _It’s time_ , he thought, and didn’t know why he thought it. He should have been afraid — somewhere distant and unimportant where a voice was speaking, he was petrified. 

Yong-ha’s vision narrowed, gray around the edges, and he lifted the lid.

A luminous marble lay nestled in a bed of white silk, shining with an unearthly silver-blue light. Its surface shifted like water — one moment icy silver and another gray as a storm. It sat off-center in the box, as if something else of similar size had once taken up the space beside it. If it were a pearl, its worth would be incalculable. 

Yong-ha watched his hand drift to it with a detachment that he absently noted was strange. A voice said something again. The faux pearl’s light deepened into a darker blue — the air above it was warm, inviting touch. It pulsed with welcome, in time with his heartbeat.

A hand clamped down on his shoulder and shook him. “Yong-ha!” barked Moon Jae-shin sharply, something like fear in his voice, and Yong-ha took a deep, gasping breath and surfaced as if from a long dive into cold water.

He slapped the box lid closed on the glowing pearl and fell back onto his elbows, scuttling backwards. He only stopped when he struck the table hard and couldn’t go any further. Panting, he frantically patted up his chest until he found his own heartbeat thundering wildly. Feeling it beneath his hand was less comforting than he had thought it would be.

The sharp planes of Jae-shin’s startled face were lit by the blue glow that was now shining right through the small lacquered box in the trunk just behind him. “What—” he started.

“Shut the lid, shut the lid!” Yong-ha yelped, flapping a desperate hand at him.

Jae-shin slammed the lid of the trunk and the blue light vanished.

In the shocked stillness, Jae-shin stared at him from across the room with his mouth hanging open. Yong-ha suspected their expressions were similar, which would ordinarily provide endless amusement for him; Geol-oh liked to pretend he was such a cool customer.

“Was...” Jae-shin stopped. He tilted his head slowly, watching Yong-ha. Bile rose in Yong-ha’s throat. “Was that a—”

Outside, a terrified cry finally rose from Chil-bok. “Haunted! The outbuilding’s haunted!” A pair of printing feet crunched on gravel and the guard’s shouts faded into the distance.

“Come on,” said Jae-shin, and he yanked Yong-ha to his stumbling feet. 

Yong-ha allowed himself to be hauled from hiding spot to hiding spot — tunneled his focus on the warm, callused hand still maintaining a tight grip on his forearm even though they had both read the letters and seen what was inside the box.

 _Was that a—?_ Jae-shin had asked, and Yong-ha’s traitorous mind finished the question for him: A yeowu guseul?

A fox pearl. It was not possible. His mother had always been weak after losing her hand to a gumiho — if his bloodthirsty old nanny was to be believed — and she had died following a brief winter illness when Yong-ha was scarcely old enough to remember her. Since childhood Yong-ha had been petrified of creatures and ghosts and superstitions and had never demonstrated any sort of facility for magic. His own mother had not been a— _he_ was not a—

“Yong-ha!” Jae-shin hissed furiously as more voices rose in the near distance, and Yong-ha shook himself and took the offered boost back over his father’s garden wall. The escape was not any more dignified than his arrival had been, but at least on the other side of the wall, there was the prospect of great quantities of terrible rice wine.

When they had staggered some distance away from the lanterns lighting and voices shouting from behind the wall of Yong-ha’s home, Yong-ha finally refused to be dragged any further and set his feet in the ground.

The street was deserted and still around them — dawn could not be long now. In the darkness, Jae-shin’s face was an expressionless mask of shadows.

“I don’t know about you,” said Yong-ha, finally, “but I need a drink.”

There was one particularly disreputable public house in Banchon that never seemed to fully close, regardless of the hour.

Yong-ha had been installed at a table in a dark corner for long enough to have split the better part of four bottles of abysmal rice wine with Jae-shin before Moon Jae-shin cleared his throat ominously, flushed with drink and clearly uncomfortable.

Yong-ha sat up from his stupefied slump and said, “Oh, Geol-oh, let’s not—”

Jae-shin stubbornly set his shoulders. He leaned over the table and Yong-ha, unable to help himself, swayed in toward him. Sweat beaded Jae-shin’s brow in the low candlelight. His lips shone with wine. “You’re a gumiho,” said Jae-shin, so low as to almost be inaudible.

A shudder wracked Yong-ha. Despite how soused they both were already, neither of them were drunk enough for this yet — there _was_ no drunk-enough for this. 

“Take, take that back,” he said, flinging his arm wide so vigorously that wine slopped from the bottle. It sounded about as convincing as the time he’d tried to convince his father that it wasn’t him who had spent 150 nyang on new bead strings for his third-best gat.

“How is that—”

“Possible? It isn’t,” Yong-ha snapped. Jae-shin jerked his head back, presumably at the viciousness of Yong-ha’s response, and Yong-ha thrashed his own expression into some semblance of ease. He smiled dismissively. The public house wobbled around him. “It was a silly adventure, Geol-oh, nothing more.”

“It wasn’t silly,” he persisted, because Yong-ha had for some reason decided to befriend a mule when he was a child. Jae-shin’s face was unspeakably grave. “We both know what we saw.”

“We do not. We were drunk.” Yong-ha unsteadily saluted him with the bottle and swallowed the hysteria he could feel trying to rise up his throat. “We’re _still_ drunk — but not enough. Another bottle!” 

The serving woman currently attending to another table shot him a dark look at his shout, but when he blithely held up two coins, she climbed out of a patron’s lap and went to fetch a new bottle.

Jae-shin lifted a hand and reached inside the deep neckline of his jeogori, hanging as scandalously open as ever. Yong-ha watched his hand move across his smooth chest for a beat too long before he finally realized that Jae-shin was producing a sheaf of horribly familiar papers. “I was holding these when—”

Terror turned Yong-ha’s guts to ice. He slammed the half-empty wine bottle on the table with enough force that he was dimly aware of something cracking. “Burn them.”

Jae-shin reached for the bottle as if _Yong-ha_ was the one being unreasonable, and his eyes widened fractionally when Yong-ha refused to let go. He wasn’t accustomed to Yong-ha’s anger. Yong-ha wasn’t certain he had ever turned it on Jae-shin in all the years of their boyhood friendship. He had never needed to.

Yong-ha felt like a thing made of sharp edges; like a blade about to be unsheathed. Like what the pearl had tried to say he was. 

“If you’ve ever been a friend to me, Moon Jae-shin,” he said, low and perfectly enunciated, “you will get rid of those letters.”

Jae-shin met his eyes for a long moment, mouth set in an unhappy line. Yong-ha breathed shallowly, trembling, and he tightened his grip on the wine bottle.

“Fine,” gritted Jae-shin, and, true to his word, they didn’t speak of it again.

* * *

Every day, a young student walked a quiet country path to reach the village school. One morning, a stranger stood weeping by the side of the lane. 

“Oh!” the girl cried upon seeing him. “Please, dolyeonnim, might you help me?”

Her beauty was beyond compare. Her skin was luminous, her eyes downcast and shining with tears, and her form pleasing to the eye. Moved by her beauty and her piteous cry, the student stoutly promised to lend aid.

The girl took his hand and brought him from the path. The way was treacherous, through a dark forest filled with thorns, but she walked with confidence and the student was not harmed in her wake. She led him to the gates of an elegant manor tucked deep in the forest.

The student was awestruck. He could not tear his eyes from her. All he wished was to see her smile. “How may I help you?” 

“I have been so very lonely,” the girl murmured, and she drew the student’s face to hers and kissed him.

Every morning, the student walked the path, and every morning, the girl waited for him. Each morning, she led him to her home deep in the woods and cupped his face between her hands to kiss him for a time before she finally laughed like a tinkling bell and sent him on his way.

The student had never kissed before, but now that he had held the beautiful girl in his arms, he understood the stories and songs. His heart was full but weak and he grew thinner by the day.

Finally, the wisest of his teachers drew him aside. “Are you ill?” asked the teacher. “I fear if you continue to decline, you will no longer be able to pursue your studies.”

“Oh, I must,” said the student, and he rapturously told the story of the beautiful girl and her home in the woods filled with beautiful tapestries and paintings and books.

The teacher, who was very wise indeed, solemnly listened to this tale. “Does she push an item into your mouth with her kiss?”

The student blushed to hear his teacher speak of such things, but affirmed that she did.

“She is siphoning your energy,” warned the teacher gravely, and when the student refused to believe such slander, his teacher related a simple task he might carry out to prove the faithfulness of his love.

The next day, the student met the beautiful girl by the path. She was smiling, stunning in the sunlight, and when she fairly skipped through the forest he was hard-pressed to keep pace with her. 

“You have made me so happy,” she told him. “I have nearly achieved a great goal and it will all be thanks to you.” 

“My heart is glad!” he cried, and he nearly thought better of his plan. But he remembered the counsel of his venerable teacher, and when the girl kissed him and pressed her familiar marble into his mouth with her clever tongue, the student swallowed it.

The girl instantly fell away from him. The student’s teacher had instructed him to look up at the sky to understand the ways of all the heavens, but the girl’s scream so startled him that the student looked down and gained all the ways of the earth instead. 

He understood, then, that his love was a cruel gumiho seeking to steal the souls of one hundred men, and that he was to be her final victim. The gumiho wept and gnashed her sharp teeth, her once-unearthly beauty exchanged for a fox’s ears and nine fox tails without the trickery of her marble, and the student went home to his village.

He returned that night with a party of village men led by an itinerant hunter. “I have been searching long for these creatures,” the hunter told them, “and I know her tricks.”

What had once been an elegant manor at the edge of the woods was now a crumbling fox den. All of the treasures that the student had so admired had vanished. The treacherous gumiho slinked across the overgrown clearing in the form of a nine-tailed fox, and she fled before their party.

The student was no hunter himself and he sat on a stone to wait. It was not long before several villagers returned with the news that the gumiho had been righteously slain. “The hunter is formidable indeed,” said the village butcher, his face flecked with blood.

The student took this news with grim satisfaction, and went on his way both older and wiser.


	2. Chapter 2

A flash of light, red and hot. It sears Yong-ha's eyes and his mind spins desperately. They are on the edge of death, he knows.

Twenty-three years and sixteen years ago did not hold the answers. Six years ago likely wouldn’t, either, as dramatic as searching for the Geum Deung Ji Sa had been. He must think more recently — he must think faster.

This past week.

* * *

Never let it be said that Gu Yong-ha was not a benevolent and patient man. He allowed Moon Jae-shin to turn up at his shop in the middle of the day with a fistful of pork buns and a jug of soju tucked beneath his arm without immediately insisting on being told what was happening.

He did ask, though.

“Geol-oh! To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” he asked, tilting his head. “And dressed officially?” He reached out and playfully tugged at the fall of Jae-shin’s guardsman’s jeonbok. “And so handsomely.” He winked, and took it as his due when Jae-shin elbowed away his questing hands.

“I was hungry.” That was likely true — Jae-shin’s stomach was a bottomless pit — but certainly not the whole truth. 

Still, he had brought offerings of food and of drink and clearly sought Yong-ha’s ear, so Yong-ha closed the shop door and pulled the curtain. “Come, come.” 

Jae-shin followed him to the table where Yong-ha doodled and drafted patterns that seamstresses would transform into beautiful hanboks. He pushed aside paper and brushes and held out his hands for his tithe. 

Jae-shin snorted quietly. He handed him two buns and removed his hat. Yong-ha had seen him in any number of states of dress, over the years, but it still occasionally took him by surprise to see Jae-shin wearing a proper topknot and manggeon. He half-expected to look to Jae-shin and find his hair hanging shaggy in his face like a horse’s mane, as it had back in their days at Sungkyunkwan. But Yong-ha’s old friend was respectable now — a member of the king’s guard and a dutiful son slowly repairing his relationship with his father.

He still ate like a wild man, though. Some things never changed.

Yong-ha teased his table manners and chattered about his latest order from an eccentric widow who wanted an entire set of sangbok in scandalous red silk, and he waited with an eye to Moon Jae-shin’s patience.

It didn’t take long. Yong-ha was still nibbling on his first bun and loudly complaining about a thread supplier from Gyeonggi who thought he could rob him blind when Jae-shin rolled his eyes and said, “Fine.”

“Fine?” asked Yong-ha innocently, because he could. “It isn’t _fine_ , Geol-oh; the man’s prices are highway robbery—”

Jae-shin leaned across the table and said, darker, “ _Fine_ ,” and Yong-ha smirked to himself and lifted his eyebrows expectantly, waiting. “I need information.”

Yong-ha sat up with a rustle of fine silks. “What sort of information?” 

“Are you going to pretend you don’t know what I’m here to ask about?”

“I thought I might,” said Yong-ha, irrepressible. 

The set of Jae-shin’s mouth was unimpressed. 

“No? All right, all right then.” He rolled up his purple sleeves and rubbed his hands together. “This is about the robberies in Banchon, I presume.”

“Killings, not robberies,” said Jae-shin, and Yong-ha sobered. “Nothing was stolen.”

That was strange indeed. Two members of Hanseong’s merchant class had been killed in Banchon, of late. That in and of itself was unusual — Banchon could be a lawless place, despite the best efforts of the king to build a better Joseon for its poor and downtrodden, but murder was out of the ordinary.

Yong-ha had personally found the two merchants distasteful — they, along with his father, had been some of the most stalwart opponents to the king’s reform of the trade laws that opened trading to all — but hadn’t wished for or expected their deaths.

“Pak Hong-bok and Yi Seong-ryong were wealthy men,” Yong-ha said slowly. “Nothing at all was taken?”

“The people of Banchon wouldn’t touch the bodies and they won’t speak to outsiders.” Jae-shin looked tired, Yong-ha realized, now that he was looking for it. His face had lost some color and there was a hint of dark circles beneath his eyes. He scrubbed at his face. “They’re afraid of someone.”

Yong-ha solicitously poured a cup of soju and slid it across the table. When Jae-shin didn’t immediately take it up, he gave it several nudges closer. “The king has turned his eye toward this matter?”

“Several merchants petitioned him. One dead merchant was enough, but two frightened them badly. He didn’t want to show favoritism to the rich but the entire city is growing concerned.”

Yong-ha knew that for the truth. The merchant district had reverberated with whispers in the weeks since Pak Hong-bok was found dead in a Banchon alley, and the noise had risen tremendously with the recent discovery of Yi Seong-ryong. The wealthy merchants of Hanseong were not a particularly level-headed or brave group. Already Yong-ha had heard wild theories that other prominent joogin were next. 

He nodded. “And the king’s steward has put you on the case, since the Hanseongbu are useless,” he said, and then he smiled and leaned in knowingly. “And you have come to Gu Yong-ha for answers.”

Jae-shin shot him a look above the top of his cup. “I’m looking for information on the Pak and Yi families, that’s all.”

“You’ve come to the right place.” Yong-ha spread his arms wide. “I’m warmed by your trust.”

“Pak Hong-bok,” said Jae-shin levelly.

Yong-ha sighed and, given that this was in regards to a murder, did not complain that Jae-shin was no fun today. He rested his elbow on the table and his chin on the heel of his hand. He lightly tossed his remaining pork bun up and down in his free hand. “One of my father’s class, as was Yi Seong-ryong,” he said. “Tradition-bound and unpleasant. They were both known to visit Banchon by night.”

Jae-shin frowned with distaste. He knew what that meant as well as Yong-ha did — rich men seeking to entertain themselves at the expense of the desperation of the poorest. He mirrored Yong-ha across the table, chin in hand. 

“Pak Hong-bok was a widower with one son,” Yong-ha continued. “Yi Seong-ryong left a wife and four clever daughters, who I suspect are glad to have been left — there was no love lost between them.”

“Enough to have had him stabbed in a Banchon alley?”

Yong-ha slowly, thoughtfully drummed his fingers against his temple in a pattern of his own devising, mentally running through several unlikely possibilities, before shaking his head. “I doubt it. It wasn’t that sort of animosity.”

“Who did have it, for either of them?”

This was what it took to convince Jae-shin to gossip with him, apparently — murder.

“No one who immediately comes to mind. Yi Seong-ryong and Pak Hong-bok were friendly with each other and each had his feuds with rivals.” He shook his head. “It can be a cutthroat business, but not like that.”

“Mm.” Jae-shin nodded in acknowledgment and swirled the cup of soju in his hand and watched the liquid slosh inside. Yong-ha tilted his head, watching him. He wasn’t one to play with his food.

“What else?” Yong-ha asked shrewdly.

He looked up. “What?”

“You can’t fool me.” He lightly tapped the side of his own nose and, when Jae-shin’s expressionless face didn’t change, he leaned back to make a deeper study of him. “Why are you losing sleep? Not that I’m saying you’re in need of more beauty rest, Geol-oh.” He winked.

Jae-shin’s mouth still didn’t twitch. “Their deaths were slow but the wounds are clean and precise.” Yong-ha grimaced, understanding now, but Jae-shin still looked — strange. Careful. He glanced at Yong-ha with a gaze that Yong-ha didn’t recognize, which was alarming. He had thought he, a connoisseur of Moon Jae-shin’s expressions, knew all of his gazes.

“Geol-oh?” he asked.

Jae-shin sighed, his shoulders rounded. “Be careful,” he said, his eyes intent. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

Yong-ha had, naturally, devoted some consideration to the question of what had happened to the two merchants and what it meant for him. While many of Hanseong’s merchants were sharing fearful whispers, Yong-ha had not been terribly concerned for his own safety. The two men killed were of an older generation and, more importantly, had died on debauched late-night visits to the roughest area of Banchon, where they were known for leveraging their money and influence to get what they wanted at the expense of those around them. There wasn’t a straight line connecting them to Yong-ha; there wasn’t even a dotted one.

Yong-ha raised his eyebrows. “Why, when I have Guardsman Moon Jae-shin to protect me?”

He finally took an aggrieved swig of the soju Yong-ha had poured for him. “Am I with you every moment of every day?” 

Honestly, he made it too easy. “Is that an option?” Yong-ha asked suggestively, but Jae-shin still didn’t crack a smile.

“I mean it,” he said. “Be cautious.”

“If you’re so concerned, maybe I _should_ be with you every moment of every day,” said Yong-ha automatically, and then he paused. Now that he had said it out loud…

Jae-shin lifted his head sharply and said, “ _No_ ” to whatever he saw on Yong-ha’s face.

Yong-ha gifted him with his finest smile.

*

Yong-ha flicked lightly through strings of hat beads, examining their clarity and color. The quality was of middling level, as could be expected from this particular seller, but there was the possibility of exploring a collaboration with a glass-blower—

“What are you wearing,” said Jae-shin’s flat voice.

Yong-ha looked down at himself, his own gat beads clacking with the movement. “Do you like it? It’s a yellow brocade imported from Qing—”

“You look like a yuja.”

A citrus fruit! Yong-ha squawked with offense but when he spun to face his insulter, he found a vision from the past: a grimy vagrant Moon Jae-shin bare-headed in dusty black and brown rags, his hair a thick curtain tumbling across one side of his face.

“ _Oh_ ,” breathed Yong-ha, caught-out. It was a sweltering afternoon and he had forgotten how much of Jae-shin’s chest was once on display; how many old scars crossed his skin. Yong-ha himself had tended to the thickest of them when Jae-shin was the Red Messenger — when Jae-shin had trusted him with his life, had never flinched from him, even when Yong-ha’s hands were full of his blood.

“We’re going to Banchon!” Jae-shin insisted, snapping him out of it. “ _That’s_ what you wear?”

Yong-ha glanced down at his handsome new jeogori again. “I’m ready for any situation, Geol-oh.” He held a pose, arm lifted gracefully. “I’m dressed for success.”

“You’re dressed to get robbed,” Jae-shin muttered, pushing past him, and Yong-ha trotted after him with a regretful glance back at the rack of beaded gat strings.

He made a hop, skip, and a jump to catch up and fall into step at Jae-shin’s side. “What’s our first stop?” 

“Yi Seong-ryong received a message on the day he died that hasn’t been accounted for.” A pair of gisaengs from Moran-gak, examining a booth’s wares together, turned and visibly swooned when Yong-ha and Jae-shin walked past them — the Jalgeum Quartet still had it. Yong-ha grinned to himself and threw an arm around the shoulders of Jae-shin, who, from the lack of desperate hiccups, didn’t notice the feminine attention at all. 

“A servant in his household reported that it was delivered by a poor Banchon messenger boy.”

“Unusual for a wealthy snob’s messages,” Yong-ha allowed — not kindly spoken of the dead, perhaps, but accurate. He tugged at Jae-shin with the arm he’d hooked around his neck, and Jae-shin rolled his eyes but didn’t shove him. He truly was mellowing with age. “Are we going to find the boy?”

“I am,” said Jae-shin. “You’re going to sit in a corner and distract every opportunist in Banchon.”

Yong-ha released him with a clap to his strong shoulder, so that he could rub his hands together. “Finally, a task worthy of my talents.”

“You’re going to get robbed,” Jae-shin said again, but Yong-ha spotted the first hint of a smile that Jae-shin had allowed to escape him all day.

As they descended deeper into Banchon, Jae-shin was not incorrect that Yong-ha drew attention. Yong-ha had known he would — he was no fool. He had no interest in pretending to be anyone other than himself and from experience, people tended to recognize him for what he was regardless of what he wore, as if he had painted his face with FIRSTBORN SON OF A WEALTHY MAN in thick strokes. 

Yong-ha blithely waved at one staring pack of children, who shrieked with glee and scattered at being acknowledged.

The people of Banchon with positions who didn’t work within the walls of Sungkyunkwan were largely butchers, and on a hot summer afternoon the air was thick with the sick-sweet scent of rotting offal. Crooked homes were packed closely together, adorned with touches like homemade talismans and laundry lovingly hung to dry.

Outside the door of a ramshackle public house, Jae-shin pointed to a rain barrel positioned to capture runoff from the roof. “Wait here.”

“Here?” asked Yong-ha in dismay. Standing over a rain barrel of stagnant water buzzing with flies, with a group of unfriendly-looking men — some still wearing blood-stained robes — talking on the opposite side of the public house entrance? “Ah, Geol-oh, maybe I should come in with you after all.”

Jae-shin was not as naturally gifted as Yong-ha at convincing people to part with valuable gossip, after all, though he was passable. If they could only find a way to combine Geol-oh’s threatening looks and Yong-ha’s tongue into one body, they would be a highly successful information collector.

“You’ll be fine.”

“What if I’m not?”

“I have faith in the volume of your scream,” Jae-shin said ruthlessly as he strode inside.

“ ‘Be careful,’ ” Yong-ha repeated, grimacing, and he gave the rain barrel a dubious look before he leaned against it. 

The back of his neck was already growing warm with sun, even shielded by the brim of his gat. He pressed an absent hand over his hot skin and surveyed his options. The off-work butchers were certainly not interested in making his acquaintance — one of them was shooting him a particularly hard look, so Yong-ha glanced up at the sky.

He couldn’t blame the people of Banchon for a less than warm welcome. They had been cast aside all their lives, treated as the playthings of wealthy men, and now were blamed when those same wealthy men turned up dead. 

It wasn’t right.

*

After the third public house, Yong-ha’s feet were discouraged — his shoes were meant to be seen, not to be walked in. He and Jae-shin had met with obstinate silence at every turn, Banchon refusing to turn on its own. No one had approached Yong-ha in the street, which was, Yong-ha assumed, Jae-shin’s purpose for repeatedly leaving him to stand outside and catch stares. 

A giggle popped up from behind him. Yong-ha glanced over his shoulder in time to see the same group of children he’d noticed earlier — four young ones of indeterminate ages and genders — yelp and duck behind several crates and a wagon. Apparently he had a gaggle of admirers. He could work with that.

He gave his very best charming smile and shook a bracelet of nyang from his sleeve into his hand. “Hello!” he called. He rattled the coins. “I don’t suppose you might spare a moment of your time?”

By the time that Jae-shin burst out of the public house backwards as if shoved, arms windmilling to keep his balance, Yong-ha hardly spared him a glance. He was crouched in the dirt, engrossed in a cutthroat game of gonggi with four raggedly-dressed children.

Jae-shin called his name sharply. Yong-ha glanced up to find him wildly looking around next to the wagon where Jae-shin had left Yong-ha.

Yong-ha’s heart twinged with guilt. “Geol-oh, here,” he called back, waving him over, and then there was a clatter of coins behind him and a burst of cackles.

He whipped back around to find the children all falling about laughing. One held her arms up in triumph, coins clutched tightly in her hand. “What?! That’s not possible,” he argued. “You picked up all of them? In a crisis?!”

“She did, she did!” the children chorused, and then they shouted and scattered again when Jae-shin approached.

“You’re playing gonggi?” Jae-shin asked incredulously. “With nyang?”

Yong-ha pointed to the dirt beside him and Jae-shin crouched at his side. “Patience, Geol-oh, patience,” he murmured. He raised his voice. “It’s all right, Ssang-dan. Please forgive this oraboni — he’s very loud.” He wrinkled his nose at her.

“ _I’m_ loud?” muttered Jae-shin, but he bowed to the little girl who Yong-ha was calling to.

The ringleader, Ssang-dan, peered at them through the slats in the crate she had chosen to hide behind. 

“You can come back now, it’s all right,” Yong-ha coaxed, and the children slowly began to appear again, led by Ssang-dan.

“He _is_ loud,” she declared, eyeing Jae-shin with caution.

“I’m—” Yong-ha elbowed Jae-shin in the side and he stopped. “I apologize,” Jae-shin said, instead. “You’re playing gonggi?”

“Mm!” She opened her grubby little fist to display five coins. “I won.”

“She’s a hustler,” Yong-ha complained, to giggles.

Jae-shin gave a soft huff of a laugh, glancing down for a moment, and his smile lingered. “I taught this one to play,” he told Ssang-dan. “When we weren’t much older than you.”

Yong-ha chuckled. Jae-shin _had_ taught him the game when they were boys — the proper version, the one played with stones instead of coins. Jae-shin had been shocked and horrified that Yong-ha had never played; had never had someone to play with before. 

Ssang-dan shot Jae-shin a frank look, clearly dubious that the two of them were ever as young and small as she and her merry gang were. “He is very bad.”

“Your teaching has been gravely insulted, Geol-oh!” Yong-ha cried, staggering back onto his haunches with his hand pressed to his heart, and the children all laughed. Jae-shin smiled, too, his face so soft as to pain Yong-ha’s chest again.

“My teaching,” he echoed. He raised his eyebrows at Yong-ha. “Nothing to do with your playing.”

“Of course not.” 

Her gap-toothed grin wide and knowing, Ssang-dan crouched down with them and extended her hand with her palm up. She opened her fist. “Again?”

Yong-ha reached out and lightly curled her fingers closed around the coins. “If you can answer a question for me, they’re yours to keep,” he said, and her eyes went wide. “With some for your friends, too.” He glanced to Jae-shin and found him already looking back at him. Yong-ha tipped his head meaningfully toward Ssang-dan and the other children.

Jae-shin greeted Ssang-dan with, “Ssang-dan-ssi,” and she puffed up at being addressed with an adult’s respect. Jae-shin was, Yong-ha ruefully reflected, better at this than Yong-ha had initially given him credit for. “We’re looking for a boy, 15 or 16 years old, who runs messages. He ties his topknot with a blue ribbon and is missing two fingers on his left hand.”

Ssang-dan looked thoughtful, but one of the children behind her suddenly fell still.

Yong-ha laid a hand on Jae-shin’s upper arm and carefully did not make eye contact with the girl standing behind Ssang-dan. “He brought an important message to a joogin household five nights ago and he didn’t receive his full payment,” Yong-ha told Ssang-dan. “We will ensure it is delivered.”

Jae-shin’s arm clenched under his hand, but he subsided, trusting Yong-ha’s lie, before Yong-ha could even squeeze him in warning to stay silent.

Yong-ha gave him a squeeze anyway.

“You will?” asked the littlest girl, who hadn’t said a word in all the time that Yong-ha had spoken with the children. Her voice was soft and wispy.

“I promise,” Jae-shin told her, intent with honesty in a way that Yong-ha could not hope to match.

The children were all silent for a moment, shooting sidelong glances at each other. Then the girl nodded firmly and dashed off into the street.

Yong-ha sagged in dismay while Jae-shin turned to track her path. They had been close — so close!

Ssang-dan tutted like they were fools and wagged her hands at them. Yong-ha could see the ghost of the ajumma she had learned that from. “ _Follow_ her!” 

He exchanged a look with Jae-shin and they both scrambled up. As Jae-shin went after the little girl, Yong-ha pressed coins into the waiting hands of Ssang-dan and her friends. “Thank you, thank you, so kind,” he said, bowing to each of them as they giggled, and then he hurried after Jae-shin.

Their little guide led them on a madcap dash through the Banchon market, following a route known only to herself that was intended for a tiny person who wasn’t any taller than Yong-ha’s waist. As they struggled to push through crowds in the child’s wake he caught Jae-shin, who was traitorously not even out of breath, looking wistfully to the rooftops.

“Don’t you dare,” wheezed Yong-ha.

*

The chase ended in flickering lamplight outside a tanner’s shop, where the little girl signaled for them to wait and then ducked inside. Gasping for breath, Yong-ha leaned against the exterior of the building with one hand and fanned himself furiously with the other.

Jae-shin stood beside him, a smirk toying at the corners of his mouth. “I can’t remember the last time I saw you run.”

Running and leaping had always been much more to Jae-shin’s liking, even when they were children. Yong-ha was perfectly happy to sit, preferably on nice cushions, and talk his way out of any given situation. “I remember now why I avoid it at all costs. I’m dying, Geol-oh — bid me farewell.”

He folded his arms and tossed him a sardonic look. “Farewell.” 

Yong-ha wagged his fan at him in lieu of drawing breath to speak.

“You wanted to come,” said Jae-shin dryly, and the tannery door slammed open.

A boy burst through the door and demanded, “What’s this about payment?” He was, as advertised, perhaps 16 years of age, and surprisingly tall — a child’s voice and eyes in a man’s body, almost of a height with Yong-ha and Jae-shin.

Yong-ha pushed himself off the wall and, still out of breath, nearly wobbled right off his feet. Jae-shin grabbed his arm and then, without releasing him, bowed to the boy. That greeting would have to suffice for the both of them; Yong-ha’s blood was pounding in his ears and he had a sneaking suspicion that if he attempted to bow, regardless of the strength of Jae-shin’s warm grip, he would wind up flat on his face in the dirt.

“We’re looking for information on a message that you delivered.” 

Yong-ha held his tongue but, in his head, groaned despairingly. Jae-shin was no master of subtlety — he needed to step into this carefully, sideways.

The boy cocked his head. “I deliver a lot of messages.”

Yong-ha took a new roll of coins from his sleeve and slapped it into Jae-shin’s free hand. 

The messenger’s eyes followed the coins hungrily. “—Actually, it’s more of a side job, so I may have a suitable memory.”

Jae-shin snorted. “Five nights ago, you carried a message to the household of a rich merchant.”

“I might have,” he said, guarded.

Yong-ha produced another bracelet of coins. “Those ten nyang for your time,” he said smoothly, “and another twenty for useful information.” Such a sum could be nearly a year’s wages for a Banchon boy. 

The messenger’s fingers clenched at his side and Yong-ha noted that his left hand was missing two fingers, as the Yi servant’s description had noted. His jaw set stubbornly. “Fifty for good information.”

Yong-ha laughed with delight. “Twenty-five.”

“Forty.”

Yong-ha tapped his chin with his folded fan. “Forty for the information and ten for your time? For a total of fifty nyang, you must be confident in your memory.”

The messenger looked like he narrowly stopped himself from rolling his eyes. “What do you want to know?” 

Still holding Yong-ha’s arm, Jae-shin shook him in warning and handed the ten-coin roll to the boy. “Who sent the message?” 

“Never seen him before. He looked like any ajusshi you see around here.” 

“This doesn’t sound like a fifty-nyang memory,” Yong-ha sang lightly.

“I wasn’t done!” the boy said hotly. “His face was ordinary, but his hanbok was strange; old. He talked old as well — like my grandmother from the country. He was stern like her too. Very proper.”

“What did he say?” Jae-shin pressed.

“Not much. He didn’t seem like he spoke often. I met him in the market — he told me where to bring the message and to come back and tell him it was done so he could pay me.”

Yong-ha considered — a stern man of old-fashioned speech and manners, like a grandmother from the countryside. “What did he pay in?” 

Jae-shin finally released his arm but, before he withdrew entirely, he left his open hand pressed to Yong-ha’s arm for a moment — like an approval of Yong-ha’s question.

The boy’s face flushed with admiration. “A wild boar. He said he killed it outside the city; he butchered it and everything. He carried it across his shoulders like it weighed nothing!”

Yong-ha shared a grim look with Jae-shin. Precise wounds, Jae-shin had said — a strong, experienced hunter and butcher could have explained that.

“I was paid with a chicken once, but never anything like this,” the boy said. Yong-ha didn’t doubt it — a wild boar could feed an entire family for weeks. It was an extravagant payment for running a simple message.

“Did you read his message?”

“I tried,” the messenger said shamelessly. “I couldn’t; it wasn’t in hangul. I wasn’t expecting someone like him to write like a yangban.”

“He wrote it in front of you?” Jae-shin asked, and the boy nodded.

“Hmm,” Yong-ha hummed. “I think this sounds like twenty-nyang information at most, don’t you, Geol-oh?”

“It’s not!” the boy insisted. “He— he—”

“Did he have any scars? Any identifying marks or possessions?” Jae-shin pressed.

“Besides the giant boar?” Yong-ha said, but they both ignored him. 

The boy lit up. “He wore an amulet on a leather thong around his neck. I only saw it once; he kept it tucked beneath his jeogori. But it looked like a bujeok — a fancy one.”

Yong-ha sighed. “A bujeok? Aish, he’s—”

Jae-shin cut him off. “You’re certain?” he asked the boy sharply. “It was a bujeok?”

Yong-ha blinked at him. It was only a protective charm — a little unusual, to be certain, especially in Banchon if it was expensive, but not so surprising. Certainly not enough to warrant the urgency in Jae-shin’s voice — the way that he strained toward the boy.

“My grandmother has one,” the boy insisted staunchly. “It looked like hers, but it was white instead of gold. There was something embedded in it, too, like a stone. But the characters were still red.”

A strange bujeok. That and the news that he wore noticeably out of fashion hanbok was valuable information; certainly more than they had had before. Yong-ha glanced to Jae-shin to see if he had further questions and found him frowning absently. Yong-ha pinched his elbow for the inattention and said, “Well, I would say this has been a fruitful venture, wouldn’t you, Geol-oh?”

Jae-shin jerked at the pinch. “What? Yes. That’s fine.”

Yong-ha resolved to keep an eye on him, and he handed a roll of sixty large coins into the boy’s waiting hand. From the look on his face the boy immediately knew he had been overpaid and had no intention of pointing that out. He closed his hand over the coins and made them disappear into his robe. “If you need messages delivered, dolyeonnim, I am at your service,” he said with a bow. “Come to this place and ask for Joon-sa.”

“I’ll remember that,” Yong-ha said, smiling with amusement, and he waited until they were away from the boy’s sharp ears before he said, “All right, spit it out.”

Jae-shin doubtless looked almost ludicrously relaxed to any passerby, sauntering through the night market with slovenly posture, but Yong-ha was a scholar of Moon Jae-shin’s moods. He saw the tension in the set of his shoulders and the flexing of his hands; the way that Jae-shin watched their surroundings like a hawk. “What?” 

“You were surprised by the bujeok. What do you know?”

He exhaled, shaking his head. “Not enough.”

It was a beautiful evening, the heat of the day having given way to a balmy night and the susurration of cicadas, but if Jae-shin thought he could get away with cryptic statements because Yong-ha was tired with sore feet and was enjoying the atmosphere, he had another thing coming.

“Shall I make guesses?” He twirled at Jae-shin’s side and was gratified to note that he had struck him with the fall of his jeogori — which did _not_ look like a yellow yuja. “It is an ancestral heirloom passed down through generations of a family of butchers.” He ticked guesses off on his fingers. “It was stolen from the king’s storehouse in a daring heist.” His voice rose with glee. “It gives the wearer an uncontrollable—” 

“There were signs that the killer believed strongly in magic,” Jae-shin interrupted.

It was like a bucket of cold water had been flung. Yong-ha shuddered with a fresh chill, instinctively glancing over his shoulder. There was no evil sorcerer or vengeful ghost to be found — only men and women going about their evening business in the Banchon market. A group of roughly-dressed youths were the only people paying any attention to him, and that was likely for the prospect of his purse, not because they were preparing to cast spells. Or because they thought they knew something about him that Yong-ha did not fully believe himself.

“Magic!” He gave another dramatic shiver. “It couldn’t be anything else?”

Jae-shin didn’t answer, preoccupied with glaring at the youths who had been eyeballing Yong-ha. For all his comments about Yong-ha getting robbed, Yong-ha had known he would be fine. For one thing, he was Gu Yong-ha. For another, Moon Jae-shin would be by his side.

The youths slunk away down an alley. “You make a fine bodyguard. Have you considered hiring out your services?”

“Only for you,” Jae-shin said, low and dry, and Yong-ha barked a surprised laugh. He smiled crookedly with the wave of affection that washed over him, and, riding its crest, he wrapped both his arms around Jae-shin’s nearer one.

“You can’t say such things to me, Geol-oh.” He tugged his arm. “I’ll get ideas, and then where will we be?”

There was a thread of amusement in Jae-shin’s voice. “Who has ever stopped you from having ideas? You’re Gu Yong-ha.”

Yong-ha lifted his eyebrows, mouth set in an equivocating moue. “True, true,” he said, giving his oldest friend a thoughtful look. 

It was a perfect evening to stroll in the moonlight. The cicadas droned gently, crowds thinning as the night wore on, and the breeze brought only comfortable relief from the day’s heat. It would rain late that night, Yong-ha could already tell — the way he had always been able to predict the weather, despite no one believing him — but for now the moon and stars were bright. Leaving Banchon, it didn’t take any talking to convince Jae-shin to stop at a market stall serving late-night snacks. Talk of magic and murder felt far from a warm summer night and Jae-shin’s face crinkling with his laugh.

They finally parted ways only a short walk from Yong-ha’s father’s home — Yong-ha to sleep under his father’s roof, and Jae-shin to return to the barracks. “Report back, Geol-oh; I’m eager to know the results of our investigation,” instructed Yong-ha.

Jae-shin rolled his eyes. “My investigation.” So saying, he leaned in. Yong-ha sucked in a genuinely surprised breath — and Jae-shin snatched the remaining jjinppang from Yong-ha’s hand, fast as a striking tiger, and backed away with a taunting bite of the bun.

“Hey, I paid for those!” Yong-ha complained. “Geol-oh!”

His low laughter came from the darkness, his silhouette already fading down the street. “Good night, Yeorim.”

Yong-ha whistled tunelessly to himself, shaking off the surprise and skipping a few steps. It was a fine night indeed and he was pleased to have spent it with Moon Jae-shin, his belly full of steamed buns and his mind occupied. In the morning, he would inspect his newest shipment of silks and consider their suitability for his favorite customers. If there was a current of unease in the back of his mind, it could be ignored.

If the back of his neck prickled, he could see there was no one watching him in the lantern light.

Still, he hastened his steps and passed quickly through his father’s gate.

* * *

There once was a family that lived in the countryside. The farmer and his wife had three strong sons but they prayed desperately for a daughter. At long last, their wishes were granted by the birth of an infant girl. She grew into a kind and dutiful child, doted on by her parents and her three older brothers. While her father and brothers worked in the family’s fields, she gave aid to her mother and she gathered mushrooms from the nearby forest.

As afternoon shaded into twilight after she turned fifteen, the daughter did not return. Worried for her safety, the eldest brother ventured out to search for her, but he found his sister making her way home along the path, carrying an empty basket and humming to herself. 

“You’re well!” he cried. “Where have you been? Our parents were afraid for you.”

She tilted her head. “I sat beneath a tree and fell asleep and when I woke, it was dark,” she answered.

This was not like the man’s sister. She was industrious and always worked hard despite being well-loved and spoiled greatly by their parents, yet she did not have one single mushroom to show for her afternoon in the forest. Still, she was unharmed, and he escorted her home to great joy from their parents and brothers. 

When the family’s livestock began to die bloody deaths, one cow’s liver torn out by a predator each night, the farmer was grateful that his daughter had been found before a leopard or a grey wolf arrived in the area. He was concerned, too, for the safety of the animals, and he ordered the family’s herdsman to spend the night in the barn.

In the morning, the herdsman’s body was discovered. His liver, too, had been ripped out and eaten.

The next night, the farmer sent his eldest son to hide in the barn. In the darkest hour of the night, the son saw his sister slip into the barn. Her unassuming lovely figure transformed, her hands turning to fierce claws and her mouth full of sharp teeth, and she killed a cow and devoured its liver before his horrified eyes.

The farmer flew into a rage when his son told him what his beloved daughter had done. He refused to believe it and, in his fury, banished his eldest son.

One after the other, all three sons hid in the barn and all three sons watched their monstrous sister slaughter livestock and consume their livers. The middle son, too, reported what he had seen to their father and was banished. The youngest son grew wise. He told his father that the cows had been killed by looking at the moon, and he alone was not banished.

The eldest son was the cleverest and an accomplished hunter, and he remembered how his sister had moved while returning from the forest — sure-footed and confident even in darkness. He and the middle brother traveled to a monastery where a wise monk blessed him with protection and gifted them three magic bottles to use when all hope was lost.

When the two eldest sons returned to the family farm, they found their sister alone in the empty house. 

“Brothers!” she cried gladly, and, beholding her sweet face and her devastation at reporting the loss of their parents and youngest brother to sudden illness, they quailed in their conviction. They allowed her to invite them to eat. 

Their sister prepared a sumptuous meal of their favorite dishes. Tired after the rich meal, the three siblings laid down to sleep.

The eldest brother woke in the dead of night to the sound of gnawing. He rolled over and saw his sister crouched over his remaining brother, eating his liver. He saw that the lavish meal she had fed them in the evening had been corpses.

She tilted her head at him in the darkness, her eyes gleaming, and she swallowed. “I need only one liver more to become human,” she told him, and when she smiled her fangs were full of blood.

He fled, pitching the monk’s white bottle behind him. It grew into a tremendous thicket, but his sister transformed into a ferocious nine-tailed fox demon and slipped through the thorns like quicksilver. 

The last son’s suspicions were finally proved true: The creature was not his sister at all, but a shapeshifting gumiho that had killed her in the forest and taken her place.

Running for his life, he threw the blue bottle next. A roaring river sprang up from the ground behind him, but the fox swam across.

Finally, as her snapping jaws closed in on him, he threw the final bottle. The red glass shattered on the ground and burst into a conflagration. The fox-woman screamed and, caught at last in the flames, burned until there was naught but ash.


	3. Chapter 3

Yong-ha was draped in afternoon light and four different bolts of silk when the shop door opened forcefully. 

“The patterns will clash,” Dang Min-ji was saying tartly, her arms folded.

Yong-ha glanced up to see who had walked in on him arguing with his disapproving lead seamstress and dropped a bolt when he realized it was Moon Jae-shin, dressed in his vigilante rags once again. Dang Min-ji gave a startled exclamation and caught the silk before it could hit the shop floor.

“Geol-oh!” Yong-ha called, turning to face him. “Twice in two days? You’ll spoil me.”

But Jae-shin didn’t smile, and Yong-ha felt his idyllic afternoon slip through his fingers at the look on his face. “Min-ji-ya,” Yong-ha said, his eyes on Jae-shin. “Why don’t we take a break? You could go check on your mother-in-law.”

Dang Min-ji’s parents had named her appropriately. She had a sharp intellect indeed — as well as a fearless sharp tongue — which was one of the many reasons that Yong-ha employed her and had grown to enjoy her company. She glanced from the unkempt figure in the doorway to Yong-ha, and then she said, “Very well,” and bundled the silks up neatly on the table. She bowed to Jae-shin when he stepped out of her way, and then, with a final wary look back at Yong-ha, she left the shop.

“What happened?” Yong-ha asked.

“The messenger from Banchon, Gwan Joon-sa, was attacked late last night.”

Yong-ha’s heart plummeted into his shoes. He had liked the boy — his frank self-interest, his quick mind. “Was he killed?”

“He was struck in the head and left for dead in the rain in the early hours of the morning, but he lives,” said Jae-shin. “He hasn’t woken yet.”

Yong-ha sank down to perch on unsteady knees. “We questioned him last night. The timing can’t be coincidence.”

Jae-shin walked across the shop and sat at the table across from him. “Don’t assume. It will become a habit.”

Yong-ha swallowed the frightened retort that wanted to come out of his mouth and regarded his old friend across the table. He was troubled and planning to return to Banchon, that much was clear. But there was still something strange in the way that he looked at Yong-ha — something all too cautious.

“What?” asked Yong-ha, resigned.

Jae-shin remained silent for a long breath that set Yong-ha’s hair on end. Jae-shin had always been thoughtful, more so than many of their old Sungkyunkwan classmates might have believed, but he didn’t pick and choose his words carefully — not with Yong-ha. 

Yong-ha frowned.

Jae-shin twisted his mouth, then reached into his jeogori and produced a sheet of paper. As he unfolded it, he said, “The two bodies, and now Gwan Joon-sa’s arm, were marred by a strange mark.” 

He hesitated again, and Yong-ha, ever-impatient, reached out and took it from his hand.

It had the look of an investigator’s sketch; the sort of artist’s depiction that was passed around years ago when the Minister of War tried to identify the Red Messenger. But instead of a man’s face, this was a drawing of a crude figure: a vertical line topped by a circle with a crown of two small triangles, with nine undulating rays radiating from the base of the line.

The sun? Yong-ha wondered, but then he tilted his head and he understood what Jae-shin had seen: a head with two ears and a body with nine tails. He looked up swiftly and found Jae-shin watching him.

The night before they entered the gates of Sungkyunkwan for the first time as young scholars, Yong-ha had made a discovery that he had tried very hard to forget. To disbelieve. When the pair of them woke the next morning, deathly hungover and tangled up like a pair of puppies in, for some mysterious reason, a farmer’s hay stack, Jae-shin had looked like he wanted to say something.

Or maybe he had been trying not to lose the contents of his stomach; either way, he had been terribly somber and squinty. 

“I don’t know what you’re trying to talk about,” Yong-ha had told him, smiling viciously through his pounding headache. After all, weren’t there things that Moon Jae-shin didn’t want to speak of? Didn’t Yong-ha keep silent for him? If Jae-shin didn’t intend to turn tail and run after all that he had seen, then he could hold his tongue, too.

Jae-shin had looked at him, said, “Fine,” and then dunked his head in a pig’s water trough. Theirs had not been the most auspicious of arrivals at Sungkyunkwan.

True to his enigmatic word, Jae-shin had not spoken of that night in nine years. He had never so much as alluded to it, and Yong-ha had welcomed his friend’s closed mouth on a topic that made Yong-ha feel like solid ground was giving way beneath his feet when he thought about it too much — which he did not, because he had better things to do with his time.

Certainly there had been moments when Yong-ha had given it consideration, over the years. A jolt of pure terror when Ha In-soo had implied that he knew the Gu family secret, before he instead turned out to be talking about the yangban family tree that Yong-ha’s father had purchased. A wild thought of what sort of powers a person with magic might possess, when Yong-ha had stepped out of his room at Sungkyunkwan and placed his body between an injured Red Messenger and the guards searching for him. 

But all in all, the idea that he could be the monster he had feared his entire life — it made his throat close up and breathing turn shallow and sharp, his vision tunnel into blackness. Made him want to itch all his skin off. And as Yong-ha was attached to his skin and liked to breathe and had a handsome throat that deserved protection, he was largely successful in avoiding the topic entirely.

But Jae-shin was looking at him carefully now, both of their hands resting on a crude icon of a nine-tailed fox.

“What sort of mark?” Yong-ha’s voice sounded strange, high and thin, in his own ears.

Jae-shin’s grimace said it all — a bloody one, then, or a burn. 

“This is why you came yesterday,” Yong-ha realized, cold. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“The first two marks were ... messy,” Jae-shin said. Blood it was, then. “The guard was unable to fully recreate them. I wasn’t sure then.”

“You know I don’t know anything about this topic.”

Jae-shin folded his arms on the tabletop and leaned over them, his eyes dark and steady. “The great Gu Yong-ha doesn’t know anything?” 

Yong-ha snorted despite himself. “I appreciate your faith in me, Geol-oh,” he said, smiling with menace, “but the great Gu Yong-ha does have his limits in earthly knowledge.”

Yong-ha wanted to know everything, always. His curiosity was insatiable; his fervor to dig up what was buried had drawn him into trouble many times over the course of his life. But the truth was that Gu Yong-ha wanted to know everyone’s secrets but his own.

“I know,” said Jae-shin, surprising him. “I brought you a warning, not a request for information on magic, you punk. I don’t know who is doing this or what they want, but they’re killing rich merchants and leaving behind _this_ , and yours is the only merchant family I know with a history of—”

Yong-ha shook his head with a quick squawk to shut him up. 

Jae-shin shot him a look but didn’t say it out loud. “Unless there are others.”

“I don’t know,” said Yong-ha — one of his very least favorite phrases. But: two men were dead. A clever young boy had been injured. And someone was killing merchants and carving a crude marking that looked like a gumiho into their flesh.

He sighed and, with utmost reluctance, said, “But I know of someone who might.”

“—You what.”

*

Jae-shin was a stubborn rock. For this trip into Banchon, he insisted that Yong-ha change his clothes and he was not swayed by any of Yong-ha’s highly persuasive arguments.

Yong-ha didn’t work at it with much devotion, in fairness. There were larger concerns floating at the back of his mind to worry about. Still he put up a token fuss before finally agreeing to dig into the stash of personal clothing that he kept at the shop for the days and nights when he was trying particularly hard to duck his father and his increasingly incensed attempts to find him a wife. Yong-ha was, by now, geriatric by the standards of the matchmaking circuit, but that wasn’t cooling his father’s ire any. Only days ago, he had vociferously complained once again that Yong-ha spent time with a wastrel guardsman from a no-account family instead of cultivating influential contacts who would increase his social standing.

Yong-ha resolved not to ruin his day with thoughts of his father. He untied his sash and toed out of his shoes as he shrugged his beautiful blue jeogori off his shoulders. It was hemmed in a fetching band of gold and he did not want to take it off or go into Banchon to act on his idea. “You have no appreciation for the finer things in life.” He peeled off his matching gold baji and stepped out of the trouser legs.

“Is that what you’re concerned about right now?” Jae-shin asked, unimpressed. He leaned on the wall next to the front door, his arms folded as he waited.

“A stealth adventure doesn’t preclude looking good.” Yong-ha stripped off his under-robe. After last night’s late rainstorm, the air felt pleasantly cool on his bare chest and arms and stomach.

“What are you doing?” Jae-shin asked sharply, a strange element of strain in his voice.

“I’m not going to wear the same jeoksam and sokgoui,” Yong-ha said practically. “These matched that hanbok.” He put his thumbs into the sokgoui waistband and pushed them down. A strangled noise and burst of movement near the door caught his eye — Jae-shin had taken a step forward off the wall and then turned his back on Yong-ha.

“What?” said Yong-ha, sokgoui dangling from one hand. They swam together as children; bathed alongside each other at Sungkyunkwan as recently as six years ago. Jae-shin had never been bashful before — not that he had anything to be bashful about.

“Hurry up,” Jae-shin said to the wall. His ears were red.

Yong-ha gave him a thoughtful glance.

*

Jae-shin afforded him a short time of grumbling about his plain brown hanbok and unembellished white sokgot of lesser quality fabric before he started asking questions. 

It was longer than Yong-ha had thought he would give him.

“How did you find this woman?” Jae-shin asked, as they picked their way down a narrow muddy path between homes. The stench was overpowering — last night’s heavy rains had overflowed the river and the trenches in this area of Banchon. Yong-ha was forced to admit that Jae-shin had been right about changing his shoes.

“I am Gu Yong-ha,” Yong-ha said absently, watching his footing. When Jae-shin was silent, which probably meant he was considering swatting him, he added, “And I made some discreet inquiries. She is the finest mudang remaining in Hanseong. If anyone knows about this bujeok or the killer, it will be her.”

Shamanism and fortune-telling fell into disfavor in Joseon long ago. There were very few mudang and jeomjaengi openly practicing at all. But even with that in mind, this grandmother was known, to those who knew such things, as the city’s oldest and wisest mudang.

The pause before Jae-shin’s question was long enough that Yong-ha thought he knew what it would be — and he was right. “When?”

“Nine years ago, soon after we went to Sungkyunkwan,” Yong-ha said. “Do you know it’s been almost ten?” He smiled without any mirth. “Longer than Ssang-dan and her little minions have been alive.”

Jae-shin ignored his editorializing. “Did you speak to the mudang then?”

“I stood outside her son-in-law’s shop on three separate occasions before leaving,” said Yong-ha wryly. “Does that qualify?” He glanced up from his shoes to check their progress as they reached a crossing, and, with a lurch, he realized that they stood at the mouth of a familiar narrow lane. “This is it.”

He remembered this place — watching family members and neighbors come and go. He had never seen the mudang herself, from what he imagined she looked like. When customers left the shop without packages of meat, he had silently asked if they had seen the mudang. _What did you ask her?_ he had wondered, and, more chillingly: _What did she tell you?_

Jae-shin forged ahead toward the butcher’s at the end of the lane. Yong-ha watched his familiar broad back before gathering his courage and following. 

Outside the door, Jae-shin paused and looked to him cautiously. _Now_ he didn’t want to charge in first?

Yong-ha took one tremulous deep breath, in and out, and forced his feet to move from the place where they’d been stuck nine years earlier.

Inside, they were greeted by a handsome young man, who bowed solicitously and then said with a smile, “Ah, you’re looking for my grandmother,” when Yong-ha tried to stammer through an explanation of the services they required.

The handsome grandson showed them through the butcher’s shop and drew back a curtain. Still smiling, he ushered them through.

The small altar room was adorned in red, blue, yellow, white, green, and black. The woman wrapped in a homespun blanket and seated before a low desk was wizened and tiny, as if she had shrunk with age. Famously old a decade earlier, the mudang now looked ancient, but her eyes were sharp and interested — and unmistakably trained on Yong-ha faltering in the doorway.

“Come, let me have a look at you,” she said. “You’re letting in the cold.”

The cold? It was the height of summer. Yong-ha exchanged a glance with Jae-shin and then stepped forward beside him. The curtain fell with a soft swish behind them. 

The room was thick with incense smoke, some unrecognizable herb with a strange hint of spice. The mudang had two incense burners on the desk in front of her, along with a bell rattle, a fan, a brush holder and inkstone, and a sheaf of blank papers.

“Sit, sit, I don’t have all day,” she scolded. She had a voice like a creaky door, impossible to ignore. 

Jae-shin bowed, after Yong-ha didn’t say anything, and then sat before the desk. Yong-ha woodenly copied him. “Thank you for seeing us,” Jae-shin said politely.

The old woman blanked Jae-shin entirely. “I was intrigued when I heard your voice,” she said to Yong-ha. “I see few of your kind.”

His kind? Wealthy members of the merchant class, surely. He inclined his head. “We’re grateful for your time, Mudang-nim.”

“Yes, we’ve established,” she said, tart. “Ask me your questions.”

Yong-ha almost smiled. “We seek information on an unusual bujeok. It is white with—”

“No, no,” the mudang interrupted. “Don’t describe it; draw it for me.” She pushed a sheet of paper and the inkstone at Jae-shin, who looked startled, and handed him a brush between her gnarled fingers.

Yong-ha was no artist, but he was certainly better than Jae-shin. When he held out his hand for the brush, the mudang said, “Not you,” with a sharp look. 

They all waited in silence while Jae-shin drew. Something ticked softly nearby. The altar room smelled strongly of incense and dust. Yong-ha wanted to look at everything and nothing at the same time. 

Jae-shin passed her the paper with a rustle, and the mudang studied the wet ink with a solemnity that Yong-ha was sure his terrible art did not deserve. “This is a very old, very powerful bujeok,” she declared. 

“Aren’t you going to perform divination?” asked Yong-ha.

The look she gave him could have butchered an entire pig. “I don’t need to consult spirits for a question I’m able to answer myself, little fox.”

She knew. 

Fear glued Yong-ha’s knees to the floor. At his side, Jae-shin stiffened.

The mudang paid no mind to either of them. “This is an ancient, hungry magic. It provides protection to the wielder.”

Yong-ha noticed with a strange detachment that Jae-shin’s hands were balled into fists at his sides — always wanting to know what he could punch, that one. Dreamily, he asked, “What sort of protection?”

“Strength. Vitality,” said the mudang. “The one who carries this bujeok will never die of old age, so long as the amulet is kept fed.”

That was twice now that the old lady had mentioned hunger and feeding. Yong-ha felt cold. “And what does a bujeok eat, Mudang-nim?” he asked pleasantly.

“I have heard tell of only one amulet like this,” she said. “In legend, it was forged by Princess Bari.” Yong-ha glanced at Jae-shin to see if he recognized the irony of it being made by a mythic princess who dressed as a man while on a quest to save her family, but he was watching the mudang fiercely. _Kim Yoon-hee_ would have appreciated Yong-ha’s connection. “Its vast power requires equal amounts of spiritual energy. ” 

“What energy?” Jae-shin demanded. Yong-ha grabbed him with a cautionary hand on his elbow. The last thing he wanted anyone to do was shout at the powerful old woman with secret magical knowledge, who had looked at him and immediately said ‘little fox.’

“The bujeok feeds on spiritual power,” said the mudang, her knowing eyes fixed on Yong-ha. “Whispers say the amulet has been wielded by a hunter for the past three hundred years.” 

Yong-ha swallowed.

“He uses the bujeok’s craving for raw power to create balance — it devours discord and the spiritual energy of creatures, and extends his life.” 

Yong-ha was vaguely aware of Jae-shin shifting his weight at his side; that the arm beneath his hand had tensed precipitously. Yong-ha released Jae-shin’s arm and didn’t look away from the mudang. 

“If the hunter is in Hanseong now, he will ruthlessly search for you.”

“Why him?” Jae-shin demanded.

She did not so much as glance at Jae-shin. “Every year there are fewer of your kind, little fox, between the cities forgetting the old ways and the villages remembering all too well. The hunter must travel farther and fight harder to hunt creatures. Your gi would be a difficult prize to pass up.”

Jae-shin shifted again. His shoulder was so close to Yong-ha’s that Yong-ha almost imagined he could still feel the warmth of his skin. Maybe he could. 

The old woman’s shrewd gaze flicked to Jae-shin. “He knows?” she asked Yong-ha. He nodded jerkily.

“For how long? You’ve never told anyone?”

“I’ve held my tongue for nine years,” said Jae-shin, his voice hard. “He’s not a creature.”

The mudang exhaled a long exasperated breath and finally glared at Jae-shin. “Whatever you want to call him, the gumiho is in grave peril — and so are you, if you’ve kept his secret for nine years.”

“Ahh, Mudang-nim, he is not a — he’s not like me,” Yong-ha interjected smoothly. 

“Do you think I’m some doddering old woman? I’m well aware this one isn’t a fox,” she snapped. “Are _you_ aware that if you reveal your true nature to one who keeps that secret for ten years, you’ll become human?”

“I’ll — what?” 

“I don’t know what your people did to seal you, but they neglected your essential education,” said the mudang disapprovingly. “There’s tremendous power in secrets, child, especially ones shared willingly. That power is banked in him, and it is at its strongest now, just before the ten-year transformation. The hunter will want that power for himself.”

Yong-ha turned to meet Jae-shin’s incredulous stare. Moon Jae-shin did not look like a man with a mystical core made of secrets. He looked like the same grumpy vagrant Yong-ha had known and loved since the age of twelve, who had finally stopped furiously throwing himself at danger like a man with a death wish. 

Who was in danger now again because Yong-ha had dragged him on a drunken misadventure nine years earlier and pressed him into silence. 

“What if that power is taken?” Yong-ha asked urgently.

She shook her head. “Your energy is strangely muted, barely detectable, but his—” She pointed a gnarled finger at Jae-shin. “He’s a signal fire. Losing that power shouldn’t kill his body, but it would be akin to ripping the burning heart from a pillar of flame. I can’t say his mind would survive it.” 

Jae-shin grunted — a Moon Jae-shin pain-grunt, not a disagreeing grunt or amused grunt — and Yong-ha realized his hand had tightened into a claw on Jae-shin’s arm— not a literal one, a very human grip. He loosened his fingers. 

“Why are you telling me this?” Yong-ha demanded, watching her sharply. “You know what I am. You won’t relay a warning to this hunter?” 

The mudang sighed and sank slowly back. “He was an upright man, once. A devoted son and brother. But after so many lifetimes roaming Joseon and slaying tirelessly, now he is something else,” she said. “Rumor suggests he is slaughtering his way through the city. Rumor also suggests that some of your kind have turned away from their old tricks, in recent years. Maybe I am a doddering old woman after all, but mindless killing doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Then help us stop him,” Jae-shin burst out.

“Such demands from two men who barged into my altar room without so much as a by-your-leave and have yet to offer compensation for my time and expertise,” she said primly, and Yong-ha finally found himself on familiar ground. 

“Why y—”

“Geol-oh, Geol-oh,” he said, smiling. He reached into the depths of his sleeve. “Mudang-nim is correct — we’ve been unforgivably rude.” He tested the weights of several coin bracelets tucked up his sleeve, feeling for the right denomination. He selected one and tossed the roll up into the air with a breezy jangle. “Would you consider one hundred nyang a fair wage for your time, honored elder?”

It was a princely sum. With mudangs relegated to the lowest social stratus, it would likely be more money than her entire family could earn in two years’ time. “It’ll do,” she said, holding out a hand, and she snatched Yong-ha’s underhand toss out of the air. She tested one nyang between her few remaining teeth with a quick bite and, with a grunt of satisfaction, made the entire loop of coins disappear.

“How does this killer fight?” Jae-shin asked darkly. “Is he vulnerable?”

Yong-ha shook his head. “The amulet,” he said. “Does it prevent only natural death, or all?”

“Clever fox.” The mudang smiled. “The bujeok does not shield the hunter from death itself. But killing him will be difficult, especially while he wears it. He is strong and wily, and not easily provoked.” She shook her head. “I have said all that I can — I cannot interfere.”

Yong-ha huffed a laugh. “Any more than you already have, you mean?” he asked the wily old witch, and she cracked a tiny smirk.

“Truly the young master is wise,” she said. “I wish you both good fortune.” She bowed to Yong-ha, and then in Jae-shin’s general direction.

“That’s it?” Jae-shin asked, unimpressed. He knelt with his legs planted apart and arms folded — clearly he intended to be stubborn. “A hundred nyang and that’s all the information you have?”

“That’s all,” said the mudang, and when she smiled toothlessly, there was a flash of warning in her face. Something ancient, far beyond living human memory. A silent reminder that in order to become a mudang, this woman suffered divine illness and then threw open the gates to her soul. That she was possessed by a deity, entwined with its grace and drenched in unfathomable power from head to toe.

Yong-ha sucked in a too-shallow breath. “Ah, we’re leaving now, we’re leaving,” he said hurriedly, with several quick bows, and Jae-shin only resisted for a moment before allowing him to drag him to his feet and across the altar room.

“Little fox,” said the mudang, as they reached the door. Her voice was deep. Flickers of something that Yong-ha could not allow himself to focus on crowned her wizened gray head. “Use the power that you have.”

He stood transfixed until Jae-shin pulled him out through the curtain.

Outside in the street, Yong-ha took grateful thin gasps of humid summer air. He was even glad of the stench of the trenches — anything but choking, cloying incense.

“You’re all right,” Jae-shin said, but he maneuvered Yong-ha somewhere and held his forearm and the back of his neck in steady twin grips until the cold sweat faded and his head stopped clanging. 

Yong-ha opened his eyes to Jae-shin’s concerned face. He had tucked them into an alley, nearly closed in by the almost-meeting of two low-hanging roofs overhead, and pressed Yong-ha’s back against an exterior wall. Something uncomfortably warm from a roof above was dripping down Yong-ha’s spine. He hoped it was rainwater.

“You really are afraid,” Jae-shin said. Rather than a judgment, his was the soft tone of someone finally understanding.

Was he only realizing this now? Yong-ha shot him a deeply unimpressed look and focused on breathing. He felt weak — like the core of him had been scooped out with nothing left in its place. 

Moon Jae-shin’s warm thumb moved in a tiny, rhythmic stroke at the nape of his neck, so slow and hypnotic that Yong-ha doubted he realized he was doing it. Jae-shin was watching him, their faces separated by the brim of Yong-ha's gat. Thrillingly normal tension — no killers or bloody marks or magic or foxes.

Yong-ha’s stomach growled loudly.

Neither of them said anything, and then the corner of Jae-shin’s mouth curled up. “Hungry?”

Yong-ha opened his mouth to retort, but realized that he was, in fact, ravenous. “My legs are so weak, Geol-oh,” he said, and his voice was gratifyingly raspy.

Jae-shin rolled his eyes but let go of him and stepped back. Somewhere nearby, meat sizzled. 

Yong-ha slid his back down the wall to sit on the ground — Jae-shin had been right about changing his clothes, as it turned out. “I’ll sit right here if you get a skewer,” he said. He held up two fingers in a promise. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Do I look like I work for you?” Jae-shin said, but he glanced down at where Yong-ha sat huddled and then toward the mouth of the alley, and Yong-ha knew he had him. He sighed. “Fine. I'll be back.”

Yong-ha merrily waved at him, folding his legs more comfortably, and Jae-shin snorted and strode off with a backwards glance.

The idea of taking a breath to collect himself had seemed an appealing one with Moon Jae-shin there to distract him, but Yong-ha began to think better of it immediately following his departure. There was too much to consider — how the mudang had immediately seen him and named him. Her affirmation that a stranger was hunting him, even without the knowledge of the dead merchants and the gumiho marks. The danger that Jae-shin was in — an abysmal exchange for sixteen years of loyal friendship. 

Yong-ha tipped his head back against the wall. What he wouldn’t give to gather thoughts from his favorite Sungkyunkwan professors — but could he even drag the words from his mouth to tell Kim Yoon-hee and Lee Sun-joon?

“Aish, what have you gotten yourself into?” he said aloud to himself, grimacing, and he flexed his hands in his lap. If Jae-shin kept his secret for another week, Yong-ha could supposedly become human. Wasn’t he already? He had never felt like any kind of creature. He had no tails, no fox ears, no fangs; no powers but his own cunning mind. And who had ever heard of a fox-man?

It was all surreal, he thought, and then he looked to the mouth of the alley where Jae-shin had disappeared — and saw him.

He knew immediately that the figure was not Jae-shin returning. Its carriage was too stiff, hanbok too crisp and neat. The man stepped out of the shadows to reveal an unremarkable middle-aged face with dark, unamused slashes for eyebrows. He was dressed, Yong-ha realized with mounting dread, like a broad-shouldered farmer who had chosen his best for a visit to the city — in the height of fashion from perhaps forty years earlier.

He wore a leather thong around his neck that disappeared beneath his jeogori.

Yong-ha’s voice was caught in his chest. The man was, for the moment, not stepping any closer, but he watched Yong-ha with unfriendly eyes. He carried something long wrapped in cloth strapped to his back — something that was almost certainly not a farming implement. 

They stared at each other.

With a crunch of footsteps, Jae-shin’s approaching voice said, “Next time, you can get your own—”

“Geol-oh!” Yong-ha snapped, scrambling to his feet.

Jae-shin turned the corner with a fistful of beef skewers and stopped dead at the mouth of the alley. The stranger didn’t even bother to look back at him — he just took one step toward Yong-ha, then another.

Yong-ha began to backpedal.

Jae-shin shouted, “Hey!” The stranger swung one powerful arm, inhumanly fast, and Jae-shin ducked under it and popped back up with the speed that Yong-ha knew was instinctive.

The stranger — the hunter, there was no one else it could be — paused, then, and finally turned and looked at Jae-shin. 

Jae-shin furiously blocked one heavy punch then another, driven backward, and threw the skewers into the hunter’s face. He leaped up and delivered a kick to the face that should have snapped the hunter’s head back. The man hardly even blinked.

The hunter’s hand whipped out like a striking cobra and snatched Jae-shin’s foot while he was still in the air.

Yong-ha stopped backing up and frantically cast about for some sort of distraction. Before he could even throw the handful of mud that he scooped up, the hunter hurled Jae-shin out of the alley with strength that should have been impossible. There was a crash of splintering wood.

Too late, Yong-ha pitched the mud across the alley. He clenched his muddy fists and took a half-step forward, but searching for Jae-shin that way would take him straight into the hunter — who was looking down at the mud splattered across the formerly pristine chest of his hanbok. 

The hunter lifted his head again. His eyes burned. 

Yong-ha turned tail and ran.

The opposite end of the alley exited into the Banchon market. He burst out amid the vendors and hooked an immediate left, ignoring the alarmed shouts that rose in his wake. There were heavy running footsteps behind him.

Yong-ha was not a talented runner or fighter. His legs were of middling speed and already tired. But he was terrified, he was clever, and he had spent his childhood hiding from his father’s servants and racing Moon Jae-shin in markets like this one.

Once, the pair of them had accidentally cannon-balled into a vendor’s stall and received the punishment of their lives for the carnage that had followed. There was only one of them now but Yong-ha had more weight to throw around than he had had as a boy.

As he sprinted past the rickety stall of a produce seller, he reached out for the pole and _yanked_. With a great crack, the wood gave way and persimmons, yuja, radishes, cabbages, potatoes, and heavy melons went thundering down across fellow stalls and into the street behind him. More crashes and shouts followed as the stall cascaded into its neighbor, which struck another stall, which struck another, and when Yong-ha dared to glance back all he could see was a rising great cloud of dust and dirt.

There was a clattering from overhead. Yong-ha looked up — and Moon Jae-shin dropped off the roof and fell into step running at his side. He was covered in dust and had chicken feathers in his hair, with blood smeared across his forehead. “Move, move!” he barked at the startled market-day crowds parting ahead of them, and then he grabbed Yong-ha’s hand and nearly pulled his arm out of its socket yanking him down first one side street, then another, until even Yong-ha’s exceptional sense of direction was hopelessly lost.

They didn’t stop until Yong-ha was staggering, and even then Jae-shin boosted him up onto the roof of a bookshop and then leaped up after him. Yong-ha thumped down facefirst into the nook created by one smaller roof pavilion meeting the larger one, half-aware that he was hidden from the street below and too exhausted to care. Jae-shin threw himself beside him and they collapsed there together, breathing hard, Jae-shin’s hand on Yong-ha’s back.

When Yong-ha finally flopped from his stomach onto his side, he found Jae-shin sitting with his back against the shorter roof and his chin tipped up. At the sound of Yong-ha’s feet scrabbling for purchase on the smooth roof tiles, Jae-shin tightened his grip in the back of Yong-ha’s jeogori. He opened his eyes and looked down at Yong-ha.

“That was him,” he said, in quite possibly the most unnecessary statement of all time. 

“This was my conclusion too, yes.” 

“Did he say anything?” 

Yong-ha rested his cheek against the smooth slate beneath his face. “He was notably unfriendly and taciturn.” He pushed himself up to a sitting position with some effort and with the security of Jae-shin’s tight grip on him. He glanced toward the edge of the roof, but he couldn’t see the street below and they had run far and long enough that there was no sound of the chaos they had left behind.

Jae-shin sat with his free arm crossed across his body, hand pressed to his ribs — an old defensive posture Yong-ha recognized all too well. He sat up straight immediately and reached for Jae-shin’s jeogori. “Let me see it.”

Jae-shin fended him off and they slapped ineffectually at each other until Yong-ha slipped down on the pitched roof and Jae-shin had to haul him back up again. “It’s fine. Just sore from landing wrong.”

“And this?” Yong-ha asked, raising his hand to the blood streaked across Jae-shin’s forehead. Jae-shin ducked his head to allow it, and, touching carefully with his thumb, Yong-ha found a shallow cut above his eyebrow.

“Fine too,” Jae-shin said, softer.

Yong-ha was coated in mud and dust and something that he strongly suspected was persimmon juice, but he dug deep enough into his sleeve to come up with a clean handkerchief.

Jae-shin gave the women’s handkerchief — a favor from Seom-seom of Moran-gak — a dubious look, but let Yong-ha gently press it to the sluggishly bleeding cut on his head. “If the mudang is right, I’ll—” Yong-ha's lip curled and he forced himself to finish, “change in a week.”

Become human. As if he wasn’t already a person, he thought. But at the same time, to lose this strange, tenuous connection to who his mother may have been — who he apparently was... Did he want that?

“Will that punk stop following you if you change?” Jae-shin challenged. Yong-ha didn’t have an answer to that, which Jae-shin had to know. “Will he stop killing people?”

Yong-ha watched crimson spots of Jae-shin’s blood slowly bloom across the white handkerchief. He said gravely, “He’s too powerful.” Without exchanging more than a half dozen blows, the hunter had thrown Jae-shin, the most accomplished fighter Yong-ha knew, as if he was nothing more than a child’s plaything.

“I could take him,” Jae-shin said, stubborn. Moon Jae-shin dashing himself against another insurmountable obstacle. No — Yong-ha would not allow it.

“Not like this.” Yong-ha dabbed the cut harder for emphasis and Jae-shin hissed. Yong-ha took a deep, steadying breath. “We need more power of our own.”

Jae-shin drew away from the handkerchief and stared at him in the dying afternoon light. “What power?”

*

As the sun set, Yong-ha darted from tree to tree in his father’s courtyard. “It somehow feels like we’ve done this before,” he whispered laughingly to Jae-shin behind the next tree trunk. Jae-shin wrapped an arm around Yong-ha’s head and covered his mouth with his hand, expressionlessly watching the guard standing at the door of the outbuilding.

Yong-ha kissed his palm.

Jae-shin sucked in a startled breath and let go of him — staggered back a step—

“Hey!” called the guard. He broke into a jog. “You there!”

Jae-shin glared at Yong-ha, still safely hidden behind the tree, and Yong-ha blew him a kiss. 

As the guard approached, he took a wild swing. Jae-shin sidestepped it and allowed the man’s forward momentum to carry him into the tree, where Jae-shin gave his head an added tap against the trunk. The guard dropped like a stone.

“Such violence! You make it look so easy, Geol-oh,” Yong-ha said, fanning himself, and Jae-shin shot him a look and dragged the unconscious guard into the outbuilding.

As Yong-ha followed, he took one last wary look around as shadows lengthened into night. There were steady voices in the distance, a woman’s laughter; cicadas beginning to sing. A stupefyingly ordinary evening.

“Yong-ha,” called Jae-shin, low, and Yong-ha jogged into the outbuilding and shut the door.

Jae-shin had already gagged the guard and was binding his ankles and wrists with sashes pulled from an open trunk. Not the trunk Yong-ha had opened before — a different one full of beautiful soft hanboks.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” Yong-ha flirted over his steadily rising panic, and Jae-shin ignored him and his filthy implications.

There wasn’t time — Yong-ha knew that. The hunter had found them once and was likely to do it again, soon. If the mudang was to be believed, Jae-shin was a towering signal fire. Yong-ha couldn’t delay.

Jae-shin glanced at him and rolled the unconscious guard behind a folding screen. The solution wouldn’t pass muster for long, but hopefully for long enough.

Yong-ha stood staring down at the trunk nearest the door. It looked disconcertingly innocuous. “Shouldn’t it be painted with foxes?” he said aloud. “Dragons?”

Finished dragging the screen into place, Jae-shin came to stand beside him. He paused, and then he reached out and turned Yong-ha to face him. “We’ll find another way if you don’t want to do this.”

His grip on Yong-ha’s shoulder was tight and he watched him with fierce confidence, which Yong-ha appreciated even if he was thoroughly incorrect. There were no other ways to be had. There was only this — what Yong-ha had been running from for nearly ten years.

Yong-ha took a long breath in, then released it. He turned again to face the trunk and gave a sidelong glance to Jae-shin standing at his shoulder. “What would you do?”

“I’m not you,” said Jae-shin, which was true and also answered the question. 

Yong-ha knew what Jae-shin would do in his place. He knew what Yoon-hee would do, too, and Sun-joon. Having such morally righteous friends was a blessing and a curse.

“You don’t have my eye for color, that’s true,” Yong-ha said, patting the black jeogori over Jae-shin’s very nice chest, and then he knelt in front of the trunk and opened the lid before he could second-guess his life choices.

Its contents looked exactly as he remembered: his mother’s hanboks cradling the beautiful lacquered box. Silver-blue light leaked through the crack between the box and its lid, and Yong-ha was vaguely aware of Jae-shin kneeling at his side.

It thrummed with power, humming for him, calling to him, and when Yong-ha relaxed his hands in his lap they immediately rose as if tugged on a string. His fingers settled on the smooth gloss of the lid, his thumb stroking the edge of a beautifully-carved mugunghwa, and then he lifted it.

Light filled the room. It was the cool light of morning, refreshing and cool; like the pond Yong-ha and Jae-shin had spent entire days leaping into, the one summer when Yong-ha had convinced his father to allow Jae-shin to join an excursion outside of the city. The pearl radiated blinding light. 

Yong-ha picked it up between thumb and forefinger. It was warm to the touch like a living thing. Like reaching inside of himself and touching his own heart. It had been cut away from him — it should never have been removed.

Jae-shin said something, and Yong-ha surfaced. There wouldn’t be any going back from this. No more running. No more hiding. He would have to trust that he would still be himself. That the pearl truly was part of him, the way it felt it was.

Yong-ha cupped his yeowu guseul between his palms for a long moment of consideration. And then he decisively raised his hands and tipped it into his mouth.

A roar rose between his ears — the cicadas rubbing their wings together outside. A voice. He smelled hibiscus and jasmine in the garden; the faded, lingering remnants of his mother’s vetiver perfume. 

He remembered his mother — her cool hand dwarfing his forehead as he lay hot and miserable. A low, rough voice raised in song. An argument above his sickbed. A long, bumpy ride with his head pillowed in soft skirts. His mother glowing, every imperfection erased, touching two fingers to his feverish sticky temple and cool relief rushing through him. A goodbye, and a brush of red tails. He knew more than it felt like his skull could contain — the knowledge of the heavens, the knowledge of the earth. 

He was strong. That was important, he remembered. And he was so hungry.

Large hands cradled his face; a thumb touched the corner of his mouth. And then lips brushed his.

This was warm and familiar. This was something Yong-ha could do in his sleep. He pushed into the much-loved lean body and parted his lips; tugged at a lower lip with his teeth, a beard scraping against his chin. The tight band compressing his chest loosened and then gave way as he gasped and then he was kissed desperately, a tongue slipping into his mouth and then withdrawing with—

Yong-ha opened his eyes. Jae-shin sat on his knees in front of him, his cheeks hollowed strangely. They glowed faintly blue — the fox pearl, taken by Jae-shin with his tongue and held safely in his mouth, Yong-ha realized, turning him luminous from the inside out.

Yong-ha shook himself, then, and looked down. He still looked like himself, even if his sharp eyes could see every missing thread, every tear in his hideous brown hanbok. He frantically patted his chest, his arms, and then — his nose and his head, oh no, but there was not a muzzle or furry fox ears to be found.

He stared at Jae-shin again, who let his hands drift down from Yong-ha’s face and then, very slowly, pointed over Yong-ha’s shoulder.

Yong-ha turned to find nine bushy fox tails arrayed behind him. 

He yelped and they all puffed up with his alarm. He grabbed one — he felt soft fur in his hand, and the touch of his hand against his tail. When he tugged at it, there was an answering tug in the small of his back.

He spun back to Jae-shin — who had _kissed_ him to take his fox pearl when he became overwhelmed. Yong-ha’s mouth opened and closed uselessly.

He was himself. His power of recall was much improved and so were his senses — he could hear Jae-shin’s heart thundering, as calm as he looked — but he was Yong-ha all the same. 

“This is anticlimactic,” Yong-ha told Jae-shin. “This transformation! Not the — transfer. That was … climactic.”

His face was hot — what a strange side effect of the transformation. Jae-shin’s cheeks twitched like he wanted to laugh at him.

Yong-ha coughed and cleared his throat. “It’s all right.” He gestured: bring it on. “You can give it back now.”

Jae-shin stared at him dubiously.

“You can! Look—” Yong-ha leaned in close but before he could touch his lips, Jae-shin hiccuped and then froze, his eyes wide. 

Yong-ha gaped at him. “Did you swallow it?”

Jae-shin frantically shook his head, emphatic, but if he hiccuped again...

Yong-ha grabbed the sides of his jeogori and dragged him in — more forcefully than he intended to, and Jae-shin nearly toppled into his lap. Jae-shin met his mouth harder this time and pushed the fox pearl back to him, where it dissipated on Yong-ha’s tongue and left his blood singing with power.

Yong-ha slowly drew back. Jae-shin was kneeling above him straddling his thigh, hand on the trunk behind Yong-ha for balance. He was still, dark hair swaying in front of his mouth with his unsteady breathing, Yong-ha's own shallow breaths providing a syncopated countermelody.

Yong-ha liked to play. He flitted among beautiful people; he availed himself of the company of the fine and talented gisaengs of Moran-gak. He enjoyed easily and he bored just as easily. Momentary fascinations came and went. Moon Jae-shin was the steady rock that Yong-ha’s river surged around, Yong-ha flirting and laughing and withdrawing like the tide before lines could be crossed.

His hands flexed in Jae-shin's jeogori. He wanted to pull him close. That wasn't new. He had always craved Jae-shin's attention and had done anything necessary to get it. He had always treated Jae-shin's body as his to touch — to hug and pat and caress as much as Jae-shin would allow. But it was different with hot breaths puffing across his lips, with the memory of his kiss and his callused hands on Yong-ha's cool face. Jae-shin's knowing eyes, dark as coals, left him stripped to the bone.

Yong-ha loosened his iron grip on Jae-shin's jeogori. As he opened his hands and pressed both to Jae-shin's chest, his thumb and forefinger landed in the triangle of bare skin exposed by his jeogori neckline. Yong-ha brushed the hollow of Jae-shin's collarbone and dipped his fingers just beneath the edge of the rough fabric, hands seeking warm, sun-kissed skin. He had never been given license to touch, before. He wanted everything.

Jae-shin's lashes flickered slowly. His left hand came to rest on Yong-ha's side and then slid to his back. Yong-ha's lips parted on a soft inhalation. Jae-shin was a bonfire, like the mudang had said, and Yong-ha stood poised at the edge of the flames.

Jae-shin stroked down Yong-ha's spine to settle his hand low in the small of Yong-ha's back. As if it were nothing, without hesitation, his fingers rested against the strange and unfamiliar place where nine tails now met Yong-ha's back. As if he knew, and had never questioned it: Yong-ha was no monster. He was Gu Yong-ha.

Eyes prickling, Yong-ha lunged up and crashed their mouths together. Jae-shin exhaled sharply and kissed him in frantic clumsy sips, rising higher on his knees with his fervor and driving Yong-ha to tip his head back. Yong-ha wrapped his arms around Jae-shin's waist and held him close. Bit his full lower lip, greedily swallowed his low groan. Heard the wild thunder of both their hearts.

Jae-shin came back down off his knees and dropped into Yong-ha's lap, a warm and and achingly heavy weight sitting across Yong-ha's thighs. Yong-ha’s heart beat to the rhythm of _I want him_. He pressed ferociously into his mouth. _I want him, he wants me, I want him_.

Jae-shin lifted his right hand to Yong-ha's face, fingers crooked beneath his jaw — and, now lacking that arm's supportive brace against the trunk behind him, Yong-ha fell back against it with a hollow thump. Jae-shin followed him halfway down and Yong-ha's body ached to drag him further in, to trap him with his legs and refuse to let go.

Leaning over him, Jae-shin paused. He shut his eyes with clear reluctance.

Yong-ha panted hard, unsteady hands clenching and unclenching reflexively in the back of Jae-shin's jeogori. Time was of the essence — he knew that. He could see the thought written all over Jae-shin's face.

Yong-ha pulled him down — Jae-shin went willingly at the touch to the back of his neck — and kissed him one final time, softer. When their lips parted, Yong-ha let his hands fall away and then pushed himself up onto his elbows.

Moon Jae-shin could certainly take a hint. He sat back on his heels. "You're all right?" His voice was gratifyingly hoarse, and a fresh wave of heat rolled through Yong-ha.

Yong-ha gave an incredulous, delighted laugh — thought he might float away with it, for all the evening’s tension. "You didn't wait to ask that before you kissed the life out of me? A rogue, Geol-oh!"

"You weren't—" He sighed sharply, plainly recognizing that Yong-ha was playing with him, and cleared his throat and brushed himself off — a true waste of effort given the state of his jeogori, which only made Yong-ha smile more helplessly. Brusquely: "Is there anything here that we should take?" There was stubborn color high in his cheeks and his ears that Yong-ha couldn't wait to trace with his mouth.

Yong-ha greedily wanted all of it, everything that Jae-shin would offer him, and every beautiful item that had once been touched by his mother, but he knew that wasn’t what Jae-shin was asking. He couldn't begin to imagine what would be of use in facing a halfway-immortal hunter with a grudge. His mother's possessions were not practical. Would they brain the hunter with a gayageum? Smear him with rouge pots? He did seem like the type who wouldn't take kindly to makeup, but Yong-ha doubted it was his secret weakness.

"Well," he said, and he laid a hand on Jae-shin's muscled thigh, simply because it was thrilling and he thought he could, as he turned to regard the trunk he had fallen against. "It couldn't hurt to peek." He lifted out the lacquered box that had held his fox pearl and set it to one side. Beneath it, as he'd seen before, were folded robes. The top fabrics were stately hanboks befitting a wealthy merchant's wife in soft, conservative shades of sage green and pale blue, silk and closely-woven ramie fiber. But beneath them… 

Yong-ha lifted out a no-nonsense hanbok in utilitarian brown cotton, well-worn at the sleeves and knees — suited to the life of a washerwoman or a butcher’s wife. “Strange,” he murmured, and then he reached for the layers beneath. Hot pink and apple-green chima embroidered with floral sprays, fashionably short jeogori in eye-popping shades, an expensive jeonmo hung with veils — all sewn with an unusual silvery thread and befitting the finest of gisaeng.

He lifted a set of deep purple skirts from the trunk and held them crushed in his lap. Who had Song Bon-hwa been? A seamstress, a gisaeng, a fox-woman, a merchant’s wife, a mother? Had her hand truly been taken by a gumiho? Was she living? It would be time, soon, for a long-overdue conversation with his father.

To distract himself from that grim prospect, Yong-ha draped the chima around his shoulders. “I think purple is my color,” he proclaimed, and he found Jae-shin staring at him. “What?”

“Your tails,” he said slowly. “They're gone.”

Yong-ha twisted and looked over his shoulder. Nine bushy tails should have tented the silk, peeking out from underneath, but were nowhere to be seen. He swiveled further and yanked up the chima hem, searching for the invisible tails he could still feel. He found them beneath the fabric, twitching with his agitation. 

He lifted and dropped the chima several times, watching his tails appear and disappear. “It’s bespelled,” he said with fascination, and he studied the trunk of hanboks with new eyes. Were they all? 

Jae-shin touched the hem lying across Yong-ha’s lap with two light fingers. Yong-ha brushed his knuckles against the back of his hand and Jae-shin shifted his weight — then froze, and then Yong-ha heard it, too. Distant voices slowly growing louder.

It would be best not to be discovered now. While Yong-ha would eventually have to speak with his father, he would rather it be on his own terms, not dragged for an audience by the men his father employed as guards, with nine visible tails. 

He exchanged a swift glance with Jae-shin. “Trust me?” he asked brightly.

*

“Where is that Sam-guk?” complained a man’s voice, footsteps crunching on the path. “If that useless layabout has crept off to sleep, the old man will have our heads!”

Poised in the shadows with the cicadas and a reluctant Moon Jae-shin for company, Yong-ha hurriedly tugged Jae-shin’s jeogori further askew and lifted his arm to lay heavily around his shoulders.

“Hey, Sam-guk!” called one of the approaching figures from the darkness.

The other one slowed. “That’s not—”

Yong-ha pinched Jae-shin, who hissed in protest but lurched into motion. “You,” he said, with less conviction than Yong-ha would have liked. “Where is Yong-ha?”

Feet hidden beneath long purple chima skirts, Yong-ha stepped hard on his foot. Jae-shin staggered several steps sideways, drawing Yong-ha with him, and Yong-ha pitched his voice up and giggled coquettishly beneath the wide brim and veils of his mother’s purple jeonmo.

“Moon Jae-shin-ssi?!” Belatedly, a guard bowed. “You’re here?” He held a torch. Yong-ha demurely hid his face behind his fan. 

Jae-shin forged on grimly. His body was a warm, uproariously stiff line of heat pressed against Yong-ha’s side. “I want to drink with Yong-ha.”

Through the fog of his veils, Yong-ha thought that the two men looked at each other. “The young master is not at home, dolyeonnim.”

“Is he ever?” muttered the other, and Yong-ha stifled a snort and heard the guard’s compatriot smack him.

“He isn’t here? We will find him,” said Jae-shin, abrupt, and he marched for the gate, towing Yong-ha at his side. 

Yong-ha glanced back at the two gobsmacked guards and, smirking behind his veils, he waggled his fan at them. One of them slowly, uncertainly lifted a hand and waved back.

In the street outside, Yong-ha finally gave in to the breathless laughter that had threatened in the face of his father’s servants. Jae-shin took his arm and drew him around the corner as Yong-ha cackled. “A fine job, Geol-oh, a fine job,” he gasped. 

“You enjoyed that too much.”

“Someone had to,” said Yong-ha practically. He swayed and swished his skirts, tugging at the short red jeogori. He pulled his mouth into an attractive pout. “I make a fine gisaeng, don’t you think? Maybe I missed my calling.”

“Yong-ha,” said Jae-shin, and Yong-ha sighed. 

“I know, I know,” he said. He hiked up his skirts around his knees, careful to bundle his tails up inside them, and began to run. Hopefully anyone out on the street at this time of night wouldn’t think too much of being passed by a sprinting gisaeng. “This is altogether too much running for my taste.”

“You’ll live,” said Moon Jae-shin, dry and serious at once.

*

The storehouse was cavernous and silent after Jae-shin dismissed the night watchman with three loops of Yong-ha’s coin. Something dripped steadily in the stillness. Yong-ha would not be caught dead storing his own fabrics in such a facility, but his father had fewer compunctions about the quality of the goods he sold.

“You think that guy will find this place?” Jae-shin’s voice asked from the darkness. Yong-ha heard the soft thump of his slow, assessing footsteps. 

Jae-shin was a signal fire, the mudang had said, and Yong-ha could see it for himself. He suspected he too was one himself now. “Have faith, Geol-oh,” he said, and he went to stand in the doorway.

This storehouse was part of a cluster owned by merchants at the very edge of Banchon, all in darkness now that the watchman and his torch had removed himself. It was, Yong-ha thought, as good a place as any for a meeting with a dangerous man. Roofs to climb and obstacles to hide behind; no passersby to be placed in jeopardy.

The waning moon hung low in the sky, washing the dark, silent rows of storehouses with silver light. Clouds threatened to scud across it — it would begin to rain and fog would roll in off the river soon. Yong-ha took a deep breath of hibiscus and the creek on the wind; listened to the far-distant shouts of the public houses of Banchon. 

When he opened his eyes, a tall, ominous figure stood at the end of the lane between storehouses. The hunter held a jang chang loosely at his side, blade glinting at the end of a yew haft nearly as long as Yong-ha was tall. 

The hunter’s voice was a low rumble, ragged as if torn from him. “Bon-hwa-ya?” 

Yong-ha jolted to hear the name of his mother spoken with such familiarity. He smiled viciously, then, and lifted the bamboo frame of his mother’s jeonmo and its veils from his head and gently laid it to rest atop a crate beside the storeroom door. 

“Ah,” the hunter said, his voice deepening. “You.” He spat on the ground. “You led me on a chase while seeking your identity, fox. You did not respond to my messages.”

His messages — dead merchants with the crude depiction of a gumiho carved into their flesh? Yong-ha swallowed the shudder that wanted to escape him.

“You knew my mother,” Yong-ha returned. He heard the faintest movement from behind him, the scrape of a window, and he raised his voice louder. “Strange: she never mentioned you.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully, then scrunched up his nose with mock sympathy. “You must not have left much of an impression.”

The hunter’s craggy face didn’t move but still, somehow, Yong-ha was left with the sense of tension ratcheting. 

“I was told that a gumiho took her hand, but that wasn’t true, was it?” he continued. He slowly swung clear of the storehouse doorway, stepping out into the street. “Was it you? She must have trusted you, to speak of her so.” He tutted and shook his head, affecting nonchalance, his heart thumping wildly.

“It is an abomination, unworthy of trust,” the hunter said, his unblinking eyes following Yong-ha’s path. “It is my solemnly sworn duty to put an end to its kind. Yours.”

“My kind?” Yong-ha laughed. He did not look away from the man standing across the lane. “Dashingly handsome, clever designers with exceptional taste?”

“Foxes. Deceivers,” the man rumbled, with the soft-spoken fervor of the true believer. “Your filthy claws pollute Joseon and destroy good men.” He glanced down, eyes flicking over Yong-ha’s skirts and jeogori. “You all must be destroyed.”

This was not a man who understood shades of gray — a gumiho who had sought, in ways that Yong-ha still did not fully understand, to protect her son. A perhaps half-gumiho who wanted to create beautiful things and was only now realizing that he likely could have spent the past three years gleefully cataloguing every touch of his lifelong best friend's skin.

“I am my mother’s son,” Yong-ha retorted sharply, drawing himself up. He was born twenty-eight years ago. He spent his childhood merrily provoking his father and soaking up gossip like a sponge; his adulthood helping his friends and the king to make Joseon stronger and kinder. He is a gumiho but he is no thousand-year-old creature, earning a tail for every hundred years of life. 

“You think yourself righteous — the one that came before you did as well. You are a monster. True gumiho will come for you, too, given time, and they will tear your limbs from your body. You belong nowhere.” His eyes burned. He stepped forward.

Yong-ha swallowed hard and set his jaw, hands clenched into fists at his side. He opened his mouth — and arrows shot from a dark rooftop overhead. The first struck the hunter in the side with a wet _thunk_. The next three followed in quick succession, but the hunter raised his great spear and narrowly managed to deflect the second, and then sliced the third and fourth in half.

Dressed in black from head to toe, eyes shining furiously from the black rag wrapped around his head, Moon Jae-shin leaped down from the rooftop and landed at Yong-ha’s side. “He belongs here,” he snapped, and he looked to Yong-ha dismissively. “What a punk.”

Yong-ha shouted a glad laugh that echoed back against the silent storehouses. The hunter had staggered back a step across the lane, hand risen to the great arrow protruding from his side.

“Ready?” Yong-ha asked Jae-shin, and instead of answering him like a normal person, Jae-shin yanked down his black mask and dragged Yong-ha into a toe-curling kiss.

“—Hey, Yong-ha,” he said hoarsely against Yong-ha’s lips. “The yeowu guseul!”

“The—” Yong-ha said, wooden, still internally struggling to come to terms with the fact that Moon Jae-shin was a ruinous kisser. “The— Oh! The— _mmf_ —”

This time, he remembered. This time, he closed his eyes and reached for the fox pearl. When its smooth weight fell upon his tongue, he pushed it into Jae-shin’s mouth. He felt the hand holding him low in the small of his back, the hot breath shared with his, and he imagined the gate of a dam opening. 

A raging flood of power rose through his limbs and passed from him into the body pressed up against his. Yong-ha pushed hard and fast until his knees were weak and his head fuzzy. When he swayed, Jae-shin jolted and passed his pearl back onto his tongue and then wrenched Yong-ha away. Unceremoniously, Yong-ha sat down hard in the street with a puff of dirt.

Jae-shin leaned over him. Yong-ha snatched a handful of Jae-shin’s jeogori and jerked him down to eye level. “Come back,” he told him with every gwan of conviction and vulnerability he possessed.

Jae-shin met his burning gaze and nodded, a silent promise, and rose with sword drawn, shoulders taut like a bowstring with thinly-controlled borrowed power. 

This was, it had to be said, an improvement over the last time they had had a discussion about Jae-shin recklessly flinging himself into danger. Yong-ha hadn’t begged him not to go and had not cried, this time, and Moon Jae-shin genuinely wanted to return. This was progress.

The hunter threw aside the arrow shaft, snapped off above the arrowhead that had sunk into his side. He lifted his fearsome spear and watched Jae-shin stalk toward him.

It was really too bad that Yong-ha was the only one present to admire this, Yong-ha thought woozily. Moon Jae-shin was a shining beacon of an anti-hero, handsome and appealingly tattered, moving with deadly, leonine confidence through the fog and light rain beginning to mist. It seemed a crime that no one else could see him like this.

Jae-shin broke into a sprint and, with a flying leap that took him high into the air, ran along the wall of the nearest storehouse and slashed down at the hunter. He had always been fast but Yong-ha's power lent new urgency to the strength of his arm and the speed of his sword. The blade flashed and met the spear haft, and Jae-shin somersaulted over the hunter’s head and came up on his opposite side in a neat tuck and roll.

Sword and spear clashed with breathtaking speed and strength.

“Would that I could rid the earth of monsters and obliterate all memory of them,” said the hunter. He did not even sound short of breath as he jabbed at Jae-shin, who swiftly flipped back. 

Jae-shin swept beneath the swing of the spear, then, and aimed a low kick that glanced off the hunter’s knee. “Enough talking.”

“You. It gives me no joy to harm my brethren.” The hunter looked like a figure from an old tale — the upright hero wielding an old weapon, his form strong and his shoulders broad. “It is no fault of your own that you have been ensorcelled by that creature. They are vicious, cunning seducers of men.”

Yong-ha sat numbly in the wet street. Gumihos were, it was true, known best as seductresses. The great Yeorim had always been righteously afraid of them; fearing his own family connection, yes, but also their wiles. What if this or that beautiful woman had been a gumiho? None of them had been — he had been the gumiho all along, as it turned out — but gumihos ensnared men with their magic and bled them dry. Yong-ha did not feel a particular craving for Jae-shin’s liver, which most of the old tales focused on, but Jae-shin’s attention, his regard, his body, his gaze, the hot energy that flooded him — Yong-ha wanted all of that badly.

Jae-shin had never extended a hand to him in sixteen years. Only now, when Yong-ha accepted his fox pearl, had he kissed him. He was risking his life. What if Yong-ha had inadvertently magicked him into it? Yong-ha took a shuddering breath. He had, after all, always been a seducer of men and women. He had always enjoyed the company of beautiful people, even if he had begun to grow bored of the carousel in and out of his bed in recent years.

Maybe Jae-shin did not want him at all. 

“Shut your mouth!” Jae-shin growled and he whirled around the hunter and stabbed for his back.

The hunter had no right to move as quickly as he did. He leaped over the blow and rapped Jae-shin on the shoulder with the haft of his spear. Jae-shin stagger-stepped back several swift paces, then flew to the nearest rooftop as the hunter pressed the attack.

This was an impossible fight, Yong-ha was beginning to realize. Jae-shin met swings with hard parries but the reach of his sword was far outstripped by that of the hunter’s ancient spear. The freely-offered power of a gumiho provided a boost, but the hunter was very old and very strong. For all his talk of monsters, he was no longer fully human himself.

Yong-ha pushed himself up to his knees. 

Jae-shin ran along the roof ridgeline. When he sprang to the next storehouse, the hunter followed. “If you fight its influence and step away, we will end this now,” the hunter called. “I will free you without harming you — you need only tell me what the creature is, to break its hold.”

Jae-shin turned back to face his pursuer, head raised defiantly as he stood poised atop the roof. “If I stab you, will you finally shut your mouth?!” he demanded, and the hunter pressed again.

The two figures ducked and weaved gracefully across the rooftop, dancing around each other. The hunter jabbed and Jae-shin darted in, too close for the spear blade. Jae-shin sliced his sword up across the hunter’s chest with a spray of blood and the hunter grunted and took a heavy step backward, close to the edge, and leaned on his spear like a cane.

Jae-shin bared his teeth in the rain, blade held at the ready. “Give up.”

The hunter slowly raised his head then burst into motion — he struck Jae-shin in the stomach with the butt of the spear and landed an impossibly swift flurry of blows, sending Jae-shin staggering backward across the rain-slick roof. Fear lanced through Yong-ha and he shot to his feet as the hunter swung the spear underhanded, like a dirty trick with a gyeokgu stick, and cracked Jae-shin beneath the chin. Jae-shin’s feet left the ground with the force of the blow and he seemed to hang in the air for an eternity.

“Moon Jae-shin!” Yong-ha shouted, breath thin.

Jae-shin’s body crashed back down to the tiles and slid, rolling bonelessly, and plummeted over the edge of the roof. He landed in the mud in a crumpled heap of black rags. 

The hunter leaped to the ground and landed lightly on his feet.

Unnatural calm fell over Yong-ha, then, like the muffling effect of a wet blanket. “Step back,” he said, low. His face was hot, his hands cold. Awareness of the rain and the mud began to fall away. His blood thrummed with unspent power — with what he had kept for himself.

Dismissively the hunter didn’t even look at him, too busy strapping his spear to his back.

Lying in the street only a few paces from the hunter's feet, Jae-shin jerked with a low groan and then, with far more effort than it should have taken, rolled onto his side painfully slowly.

Yong-ha slipped into the cold shadows, then.

“This gives me no pleasure,” the hunter said, barely looking down at Jae-shin as he dusted off his hands. “Know that the power you provide will save countless innocents.”

Darting from dark corner to dark corner, Yong-ha saw Jae-shin extend an arm to reach for his sword — fallen far beyond his straining fingers, behind the hunter.

“I have not faced a challenge like yours in some years,” said the hunter. He stepped toward Jae-shin, his footsteps heavy. He reached beneath his jeogori and, hand on the leather thong around his neck, drew out an amulet that shone, pulsing like a diseased heartbeat, with a strange, terrible red light. “I am grateful.”

Jae-shin's movements were slow and uncoordinated, still, like a man stunned. He would not lift a sword like this. But he raised his head and spat at the hunter's feet, and while he missed by a wide margin, the hunter's craggy face hardened. He lifted the sickly red amulet above Moon Jae-shin.

Yong-ha broke from cover. He ran, bent to snatch Jae-shin’s blade from the street without breaking stride, and, as he stumbled because the Red Messengers made this look far easier than it actually was, he stabbed the hunter in the back of the knee instead of in the back as he had intended. 

The man bellowed.

Yong-ha flung himself between the hunter’s legs in an ungainly scramble as he continued to fall, and he landed flat on his back, sliding in the mud. The furious hunter lifted his boot, pulsating amulet held high above, and, mind gone blank with terror, Yong-ha instinctively raised both feet. With all of his strength, he viciously kicked the hunter between the legs.

The hunter froze, apparently not prepared for such an undignified assault on his person — he wheezed silently, mouth open wide, and collapsed sideways. 

So he was still a man, not a full monster, after all.

Yong-ha left the sword sticking out of the hunter’s leg like a skewer of pork and scrambled to Jae-shin’s side on his hands and knees. “Get up, get up,” he begged, pulling at his arms and his shoulders. “Hurry!”

Jae-shin’s nose and mouth were soaked in blood, his eyes unfocused on Yong-ha’s face. With wonder, he asked, “Did you just—” 

“ _Moon Jae-shin_ ,” Yong-ha snapped. “Now!” But it was too late. He spun to face the heavy footsteps approaching behind him.

The man lurched unsteadily, ripping the sword from his own leg. “This ends now,” he roared. “Just like her with your dirty tricks — you all are!”

Yong-ha crouched between Jae-shin and the oncoming raging bull. His heart thundered out of control. He wondered, absently, if it could buy them some time if he were to be sick on the hunter’s boots. “Ahh, so it’s ‘her’ now,” he said sagely. “A jilted lover, perhaps?”

The hunter growled, “Never!” and flung Jae-shin’s sword aside as if it were a child’s toy. It clanged heavily as it landed in the wet street, far out of reach. 

“Leave,” said Yong-ha, trembling with fury and with animal fear, pouring all the command that he possessed into his words. “This man has done nothing worthy of your retribution, and I have no interest in livers or in seducing men to their graves.” An unsteady hand plucked weakly at his chima behind him, Jae-shin saying his name, and Yong-ha understood that seducing a man to his grave was precisely what he had done to Jae-shin. His voice nearly caught in his throat. “Go!”

“It is time for your captive now, little fox, and then it will be your turn,” the hunter rumbled, low and final. His amulet flamed red and the world — shifted.

* * *

The stories are not consistent. They never are. A gumiho may drain an unsuspecting man’s soul with a fox pearl, people whisper. Gumiho hunt at the full moon and will die without the consumption of men’s livers, of blood and bone. They predict the rain. They may heal with a touch, but they hoard that power and only share it when it benefits their own ends. They hold the form of girls, of foxes, of bone. They marry kings, they marry peasants. They hide their true nature from their husbands; they reveal it and gobble them up in three bites.

There are constants — only a handful. Gumiho are cruel, vicious demons preying upon good men in search of the monsters' fondest dream: to become human. They take the form of women whose beauty challenges empires and shakes civilizations to their foundations. There are vanishingly few tales of handsome fox-men. The most famous ends with a gumiho husband and wife being tricked into a battle to the death with a tigress. The human trickster took their ill-gotten riches for himself and returned home a wealthy man. 

The stories end the same: with a brave, clever man outwitting the vile gumiho and sending her to her death.

* * *

Yong-ha doesn’t know how his story will end. He does not know what he can do.

But he is ready now.


	4. Chapter 4

Use the power that you have, the old mudang had said.

Yong-ha has always been powerful. He had a handsome face and the perfect outfit for every occasion. He had his sharp wits and sharper tongue. He had a gift for charming and cajoling; for scheming and bribing and cunning. He enjoyed the twin shields of his father's fortune and the king's favor and he wielded secrets like the finest blade.

But he has other power, too. His temper — difficult to provoke in all seriousness, but deadly when genuinely felt. His obstinate determination when he has set his mind to something. And something still older. Wilder.

The night whirls: the hiss of rain, the squelch of mud, Jae-shin breathing swiftly and shallowly behind Yong-ha; the heavy heartbeats of a strong, violent man bent on doing harm, in front of him. Darkness, searing red light, cascading fabric. It all spins and stretches and elongates and then painfully cracks all at once and Yong-ha’s ears pop.

He snarls again, jagged and wordless from an unfamiliar changing throat, and he leaps for the hunter reaching out for Jae-shin. 

The hunter howls and falls away from two snaps of powerful jaws, blood streaming from his wrist and bubbling around the hand he has clapped to his own neck.

A clever fox lands on all four paws, furious hackles raised and nine tails bristling behind him, with a muzzle full of salty blood and an amulet dangling from his teeth by its snapped leather thong. 

His eyes dart quickly. He is small and the colors around him are deeply muted. He can smell meat somewhere on the wind — he can smell blood and Moon Jae-shin’s sweat and his own wet fur and the rank, acrid stench of power oozing from the hunter, who, horrifying to his fox nose, has no human scent at all.

Yong-ha plants his black-tipped paws in the mud in front of Jae-shin and growls deep in his chest, teeth bared, at the hunter. His tails slowly swish.

“Give that to me,” the hunter says, soft. “You do not know of what you—”

He thinks Gu Yong-ha does not know? Yong-ha knows more than enough. Yong-ha whips his head and opens his clenched jaws. The amulet sails into the darkness and strikes something, hard, with a clatter.

The hunter roars and makes an ill-advised lunge, and Yong-ha snaps sharp teeth at his grasping hand and darts away with the hunter limping hot on his heels.

The hunter is not so soft-spoken any longer. “I have waited twenty years to find you and your elder and put an end to you both, whelp!” Metal clangs on stone, sparks flying, as Yong-ha dodges a blow from the great spear. “Where is she?!”

Yong-ha only wishes he knew where Song Bon-hwa is, or if she is alive. She may have wise ideas of how to handle an angry practically-immortal with a great big spear and a magical soul-sucking amulet. Yong-ha is flying by the seat of his — well, his skirts are on the ground some distance away now, along with the rest of his clothes and Jae-shin. But this will have to be enough.

Yong-ha opens his mouth experimentally and what escapes his muzzle is not words but a noisy chitter like a hysteria-tinged laugh. The hunter should know better than to ask questions of a fox. 

The noise seems to enrage the man all the same. Yong-ha hears his grunt and feels the displacement of air and he drops flat on his belly. The spear blade flashes overhead close enough to part a line in the fur across his back, and the hunter staggers past with the momentum of his heavy swing. 

Yong-ha scrambles up to his paws and flees in the opposite direction, bobbing and weaving, as the hunter throws his spear with such force that it embeds itself deep into the ground, quivering, in the space where Yong-ha’s front paw nearly was. Pinwheeling to a stop to avoid the spear, Yong-ha spins in the darkness and finds himself facing the corner between two adjacent buildings. A flash of movement catches his eye behind the hunter: Jae-shin slowly rising to his feet.

“I feel satisfaction, not gladness, to balance this wrong!” the hunter shouts. He sounds truly unhinged.

Yong-ha’s mind swiftly flashes through options and he lands on a distasteful one. He trusts Jae-shin and his preternatural skill with a bow and arrow implicitly, but if the hunter does not take the opportunity to gloat that Yong-ha anticipates he will... He hesitates as if uncertain of where to turn in the dark, taking a step back into the corner. The hunter leaps with a flutter of his traditional jeogori and lands heavily on his feet before him. Yong-ha slowly backs into the corner, heart hammering wildly in his chest. The two walls are smooth and tall, offering no obvious escape. 

The hunter’s broad frame fills the space in front of him as he yanks his spear from the impaled ground as if it were nothing. “You and your kind should never have existed.”

 _Use the power that you have_ , Yong-ha remembers again. He tucks his tails close as if cowed and carefully pads backward until he finally runs into the wall.

“Change your form, demon, and tell me where I might find her.” The hunter looms above him.

Yong-ha has no idea how to transform back — does not know how he did this in the first place — and wouldn't even if he could. Unable to insultingly convey that through speech, he hisses, jaws open wide and ears flat against his skull. That seems to convey his point admirably enough; the hunter lifts his spear.

With an entirely different hiss and a meaty _thud_ , an arrow sprouts from his forearm. While the hunter is still staring at his own arm, another arrow strikes his thigh.

As a third arrow lands in the hunter's chest, Yong-ha moves like running water, scrabbling and slinking out to freedom from between the tall legs. The hunter screams, a sound of pure rage that makes Yong-ha’s sensitive ears ring, and then turns on the archer who struck him. Moon Jae-shin leans heavily against a wall, bow clenched tight in hand. Yong-ha’s heart beats wildly to see him on his feet. He is the stubbornest man alive. He is Yong-ha’s very favorite person.

“Give up,” Jae-shin calls tightly. “Submit to arrest, now, while you still have your life.” He reaches into the quiver on his back and nocks his next arrow.

Yong-ha moves swiftly and silently, pressed low to the ground.

“Never,” breathes the hunter. “I will never stop.” He stalks forward and Jae-shin puts another arrow in him, then another, then another, until he looks like a murderous pincushion, hardly jerking with the blows any longer as he advances on Jae-shin. “I will never rest until you and every last gumiho are—”

The fox lunges out of the darkness and the rain and, with one swipe of razor-sharp claws and a snap of his fangs, takes from the hunter. The man screams, finally staggering, and drives a boot into Yong-ha’s side that sends him rolling away with a thump of pain, jaws still locked tightly around his prize.

Yong-ha picks himself up and shakes out his soaking wet fur, and fox and hunter watch each other in silence. The hunter crashes down to his knees, more blood than a body should hold already pooling beneath him. “No.”

Yong-ha opens his mouth and daintily drops the liver in the street between his two front paws.

“ _No_ ,” the hunter howls. A man like this doubtless cannot think of any worse end — his contemptible enemy of three hundred years, devouring him and taking his life force for its own. 

It would be fitting and poetic, and possibly even justified, given the number of people he has killed.

Yong-ha sits back on his haunches, tucking his wet bushy tails around himself.

“What are you doing?” the hunter says, slowly, sinking lower. The color already fades from his skin. “You will not…?”

Yong-ha cocks his head to one side, tongue lolling. He is a fox and he is Gu Yong-ha. He has no interest in eating anyone’s liver.

“No,” says the hunter, and he gives a wet bark that might have been a laugh, once, as he collapses onto his side. The beat of his heart slows further and further. “No, I will not accept this facsimile of mercy — you think yourself so _civilized—_ ”

Yong-ha turns his back on the dying man and goes to Jae-shin. He leaves the liver and the hunter where they lie.

Jae-shin is still propped against the exterior wall of a storeroom, shielded from the rain by the roof overhang above. He holds his bow in one fist, looking suspiciously out into the street. He even smells tense.

Yong-ha quickly trots back and forth in front of him, anxiously lifting each paw high off the ground as he steps. He wants to touch Jae-shin’s wounds for himself, wants to sit on him until he agrees to hold still and be bandaged — he wants hands with five fingers each, and a human mouth. He doesn’t know what Jae-shin wants.

“That punk,” Jae-shin says, still staring out into the rain, and a noise escapes Yong-ha that, fox or not, sounds faintly like a panicked laugh. He would wager that no one has ever called the hunter a punk in all his long life. “Is he dead?”

Yong-ha flicks his ears and listens. The soft hiss of the rain; the splashing of puddles. No more thin cursing. A heavy heartbeat gone still. He tilts his head far back to make eye contact with Jae-shin, and he bobs his head. It is a relief and burden at once. Yong-ha has never raised his hand to anyone with intent to kill before; he supposes, distantly, he still hasn't.

Jae-shin carefully squats, lowering himself to Yong-ha’s level without hesitation. “Can you change back?”

Yong-ha barks. If he knew how he had done this, would he not have undone it already? His sides rise and fall quickly. He is a fox, he is willing to accept that now, but that does not mean that he wants to _remain_ all fox.

“You had to do it. He was a danger to anyone who crossed his path,” Jae-shin tells him. “And he was full of shit besides.” With absolute disdain: “Like you could magic me into anything.”

A hammer of fondness strikes Yong-ha's chest and the echo reverberates through him like a struck bell. He wants to laugh; he wants to say something; he wants to force Jae-shin to accept his embrace. In the absence of those options, he returns to pacing with nervous energy, his body close to the ground and his tails tucked low.

“Hey, Yeorim.” Jae-shin’s even tone washes over Yong-ha and his raised hackles like cool water on feverish skin. He turns to regard Jae-shin. “You understand me, right?”

Yong-ha fleetingly gives consideration to biting him to demonstrate that he does, but instead he nods again.

“Good.” Jae-shin sits. “The way I feel... it’s been a long time,” he says. He looks at Yong-ha as if they were sitting comfortably across from each other at a table over a bottle of soju. As if Yong-ha is the same man he has always been. “It has nothing to do with any magic. It never did.” He settles with his legs crossed and his knees spread open, his hands resting on them in invitation.

Yong-ha whines low in his throat and crawls into his lap to curl up, nine white-tipped red tails and all. He tucks his snout into Jae-shin's hip and draws deep breaths of his comforting, well-known scent.

“Don’t think this will become a habit,” Jae-shin warns, but he has already laid a hand on Yong-ha’s head and Yong-ha is certain he can con Jae-shin into petting him again later. Jae-shin strokes the wet fur between his pointy ears. Yong-ha closes his eyes and carefully, calculatedly fantasizes about Jae-shin’s hand brushing through human hair instead.

For all his pretense to gruffness, Jae-shin does not rush him. His heart beats like a slow, steady drum. Yong-ha focuses on him, on his familiarity, instead of on the taste of blood in his mouth and the sour scent of death. His own jackrabbiting heart begins to slow. Jae-shin picks up first one paw, then the other, and wipes blood from Yong-ha’s claws on his own black jeogori. He gently cleans his muzzle, too, paying no heed to sharp teeth, and Yong-ha finally loosens.

There’s no warning — one moment Yong-ha is entertaining himself with the image of draping his fox body around Jae-shin’s neck like a furry ruff, and the next he is two-legged and cold and very naked. He can feel he is sprawled half across the chilly ground and half across a warm lap, his hair and tails heavy with rainwater. He opens his eyes and blinks up at Moon Jae-shin leaning over him.

Yong-ha cringes at the reintroduction of saturated color to his formerly fox eyes, and he shuts his eyes again. “Hey!” Jae-shin protests. “You jerk. You need to hide from my face so quickly?”

“Too handsome, Geol-oh, it’s blinding!” Yong-ha’s voice feels hoarse but oh, he is so glad to hear it! He will never take it for granted again. He will talk until it gives out. He throws an arm across his eyes.

“Do you think you’re going to sleep here?” Jae-shin says dubiously, but he’s slowly peeling strings of wet hair off Yong-ha’s cheeks and stroking them back from his forehead. 

“Aish, you’re wearing too many clothes for that fantasy.” Yong-ha slowly blinks his tired eyes open again and then grimaces his way up to sit, with Jae-shin’s help. He feels cold, mostly — scooped empty and exhausted. If it weren’t for the misery of the rain, he could sleep now. He sways on his knees, remaining balanced with the help of his tails, and he grabs Jae-shin’s cheeks between his hands, forcibly tilting his head to study the cut at his temple washed clean by the rain. 

“Are you badly hurt? Are you hiding a dangerous wound?” he demands. “You fell off a roof!”

“I’ve fallen off plenty of roofs,” Jae-shin says, which is not a comforting statement, but he seems to be moving well enough now. Maybe he had only been battered and stunned, after all. He takes Yong-ha’s wrists in both hands and pushes his hands down to his lap, and then it is Yong-ha’s turn to have his face held as Jae-shin carefully wipes around his mouth with his thumbs. Cleaning away the remnants of the hunter’s blood, Yong-ha realizes with a roil of his stomach.

“Fetch your marble,” Jae-shin says gruffly, and Yong-ha smiles to hear something that sounds suspiciously like a hiccup as Jae-shin pushes to his feet and goes to collect the clothing that Yong-ha had leaped out of when he changed. He tries to hide it by noisily squelching his boots through the mud, but he is most certainly made awkward by Yong-ha’s nudity. 

It cheers Yong-ha tremendously — as much as he can be cheered at the moment, anyway.

Yong-ha takes a deep breath and reaches inside himself. He is a gumiho, he reminds himself firmly. He did this before and he can do it again. He is calling for what is rightfully his. And it _is_ his now; the fox pearl manifests on his tongue like it’s nothing. It’s warm, still, throbbing with his heartbeat, but now that pulse feels familiar instead of frightening. There are more frightening things in the world, after all.

Jae-shin’s footsteps splash as he returns. He kneels in front of him and drapes the soaking wet skirts of the purple chima around Yong-ha’s cold shoulders, and uses the two sides of the fabric to draw him in close.

“Take your power back,” he says aggressively, insistent, and he fits their mouths together.

It is not the most sensual invitation Yong-ha has ever received, but Jae-shin is right that it needs doing. He’s too tired; too cold. Jae-shin takes the pearl from Yong-ha’s mouth and Yong-ha warms himself at Jae-shin’s roaring fire — he pulls and pulls at something that feels like himself but mixed with Moon Jae-shin, too, as strength returns to his limbs. He lifts his hands to cup Jae-shin’s jaw. He tastes intoxicating, finer than the sweetest rice wine. Yong-ha could drink him in for days, for years, and never have enough.

He slips his pearl back onto his own tongue and lightly bites Jae-shin's lip. The blue glow of the transfer fades from behind his eyelids. Jae-shin’s eyes are still closed, waiting patiently. Struck by tenderness and the swell of power in his veins, the memory of an old tale, Yong-ha lifts his thumb to Jae-shin’s temple and watches the cut close up in an instant. He touches his bloody nose, next.

Jae-shin slowly opens his eyes. “You can do that?”

Yong-ha smiles. “I am Gu Yong-ha,” he says, and Jae-shin looks at him, then starts to smile, then huffs a soft laugh.

“Eh? Ehh??” Yong-ha says, prodding him, and Jae-shin bats away the probing hands searching for hidden injuries beneath his jeogori. He will find and heal all of Jae-shin's wounds accumulated in his defense, later.

“Put some clothes on,” Jae-shin grouses, and he rises to his feet.

Yong-ha realizes, watching him go, that Jae-shin means to investigate the body lying in the street. He quickly turns his back and busies himself putting himself to rights. There isn’t much he can do — the borrowed chima and jeogori befitting a gisaeng were ruined in the rain and dragging slimy fabric onto his wet body is deeply unpleasant. But the magic spelled into the thread still works, so his fox tails disappear from his silhouette. He winds his wet hair into a loose knot atop his head.

Jae-shin returns with Yong-ha’s discarded jeonmo in one hand and the cracked amulet dangling from the other. Yong-ha eyes it warily but its face has been smashed and there is no sign of the sickly red light. “Don’t touch it,” he warns, all the same. He digs through the pile of wet clothing that he didn’t bother putting back on and brightens when he finds the sokgot. There is something deeply poetic about wrapping the cursed amulet in an undergarment.

Jae-shin stuffs the entire wet bundle into his quiver and then settles the wide-brimmed hat on Yong-ha’s head. Its purple paper must have been waxed, or perhaps bewitched, too — the frame has maintained its integrity despite the rain and its drooping veils, and Yong-ha smiles to see the vibrant mugunghwa petals printed across it.

Yong-ha holds up his hands expectantly, and Jae-shin hauls him to his feet. “Geol-oh, you said you’ve felt this way for a long time. Which way is that?” Yong-ha asks, tucking his arm through Jae-shin’s. It does not escape his notice that Jae-shin has positioned himself to block Yong-ha's view of the street. 

“It’s time to go,” Jae-shin says firmly, a hint of color high in his cheeks, and the corner of Yong-ha's mouth curves.

* * *

Yong-ha strolls along the tall bookshelf, lightly running his fingers across the book spines. His fingertips come away dusty — he pulls a face and shakes his hand out. “Hwang is really letting the place go,” he calls through the shelf. From the lack of immediate complaint from the bookseller himself, Hwang is likely still at the front of the shop fawning over a wealthy prospective customer. 

Yong-ha hears Jae-shin’s amused huff from the other side of the shelf. “You’re a cleaner now?”

Yong-ha brushes off his jeogori, resplendent in shades of maroon and burgundy with a delicate lacy overlay. It isn’t fully comfortable — not with nine tails strapped to his legs and torso beneath it and his baji. An elegant solution, it is not, though it had the delicious benefit of Jae-shin putting his hands all over him as he helped him get dressed. 

Soon, Yong-ha intends to work with Dang Min-ji and information purchased from Banchon’s finest mudang to reverse-engineer his mother’s hanboks. He will find the secret spells that hide his tails beneath fabric and create a line of products for himself and for a discreet branch of customers. He cannot be the only being in Hanseong with something to hide. And the mudang, too, will doubtless have advice on how to dispose of the shattered lifeless amulet they left stuffed into Jae-shin's quiver. There will be much to discuss — later.

Yong-ha tuts softly. “You use a basement a few times for a top-secret mission from the king and the entire shop falls apart.”

Dryly: “A slow decline.” Jae-shin’s footsteps are slow and measured. “It’s been six years.” 

Six years since the last time a great secret of Yong-ha's was revealed — since he defiantly completed his Sungkyunkwan education as a member of the merchant class and Jae-shin hung up his mask as the Red Messenger; since Kim Yoon-hee found the Geum Deung Ji Sa and the king finally committed to his promises of a brave new Joseon. Yong-ha can only fervently hope that his vulpine heritage is the last Gu or Song family secret to need keeping.

“So it has.” Yong-ha shoves a stack of books aside and leans his folded arms on the shelf, chin on top. Caught studying the spine of a book on the other side, Jae-shin raises his eyebrows. He’s handsome in the afternoon light, dust motes drifting around him, wearing a black gat and a hanbok in shades of midnight blue. He still won’t allow Yong-ha to dress him, but he enthusiastically participated in mutual undressing last night and that was a revelation.

He held Yong-ha when he woke from a nightmare of bared fangs and blood; eventually rolled over and fell back asleep with Yong-ha's leg thrown over him and Yong-ha breathing sleepily into the nape of his neck, and that, too, was a gift.

Yong-ha watches him for a moment, soft with the memory, and merrily leers when Jae-shin looks up and catches his eye. Jae-shin uses the book in his hand to push Yong-ha’s head out of the shelf and back into his own aisle but Yong-ha sees his smile just before he takes a book cover to the face.

“Why were you so insistent on Hwang’s?” Jae-shin asks. There’s rough warmth in his voice, the hint of his own suggestion. _I thought we were going to stay in all day,_ it teases, and what a thought that is. They _had_ enjoyed a private room at Moran-gak this morning until the sun was high overhead — Jae-shin finally forced to stop hiccuping and admit that the courtesan house had its benefits when it came to privacy.

Yong-ha wags a finger at the books separating him from Jae-shin. “We can’t turn up to Sungkyunkwan empty-handed, Geol-oh.”

“Daemul and Garang’s shelves will collapse soon if they collect many more books.”

“You think you’re superior? I’ve seen your shelves,” says Yong-ha archly, amused, and Jae-shin barks a laugh. 

They both arrive at the end of the shelf and find themselves face to face. Jae-shin lowers his voice. “Rivaled only by your collection of red books.”

Yong-ha sways in and purrs, “Are you complaining?” 

“No,” says Jae-shin. He lays a hand flat on Yong-ha’s chest as if he is about to push him away, but he doesn't. It is difficult for Yong-ha’s body to contain the joy of Moon Jae-shin looking at him like that in the dusty back room of a seedy Unjong District bookshop. A shiver of pure delight escapes him.

“Why are we going to Sungkyunkwan?” Jae-shin asks, voice silky.

Yong-ha tilts in close just to see if Jae-shin mirrors him, and he does. He pats Jae-shin's expectant face and twirls away in a whirl of silk and gat beads. “To visit our good friends, of course — our very best friends. Must everything have an ulterior motive?”

Jae-shin follows him deeper into the stacks. “No, but you usually do.”

“We,” says Yong-ha, plucking a racy treatise off the shelf that their friends won’t publicly thank him for but would doubtless appreciate privately, “are going to tell them.”

He frowns. “Tell them what?”

Yong-ha tucks the book beneath his arm, raises his hands to the top of his hat, and mimes two triangular ears. “Bark bark!”

“—Tell them _that_?” Jae-shin yelps, and he glances over his shoulder in alarm and herds Yong-ha further into the shop. 

“Ooh, Geol-oh! So strong!” Yong-ha laughs, wiggling in delight over being manhandled.

Hwang hides some of his less-than-legal materials toward the dusty back of the shop. The backroom is quiet and empty around them — they will hear any approaching footsteps long before they’re seen amid the stacks. Jae-shin folds his arms and stares at him with intent, obvious concern. “You’re going to tell them?”

“No, you are.”

“What,” says Jae-shin.

“To be precise, you’re going to tell Garang and release the burden of your ten-year secret.” 

“I don’t care about the mudang’s power crap,” says Jae-shin, never one to mince words. He drops his voice further. “She said you’ll become human if I keep your secret for ten years. It’s only two more days.”

“That’s why you’re going to tell Garang,” Yong-ha tells him, and he watches realization dawn across his handsome face. 

“You want to stay a gumiho,” he says, low.

A handful of days of exploration is very little time. There’s so much to discover, still. He is Gu Yong-ha, after all, and that means many things. Son of Song Bon-hwa and Gu Si-min. Lover of Moon Jae-shin. Friend to Kim Yoon-hee and Lee Sun-joon, along with any number of lesser acquaintances. Artist, scholar, merchant, shrewd negotiator. Man. Gumiho.

“I do,” Yong-ha says experimentally. The words, inconceivable mere days earlier, do not taste sour or bitter in his mouth. He nods with conviction and meets Jae-shin's gaze with his eyebrows raised. “You disapprove?” He has made his decision regardless, and Jae-shin has never shown the slightest hint of objection to Yong-ha’s true nature — when really he probably _should_ have objected, or at least had a second thought or two — but unease sticks in his throat all the same.

Jae-shin shakes his head, resolute, and reaches out to grip his elbow. “No.”

Yong-ha believes him.

Moon Jae-shin, it turns out, is a romantic. Yong-ha knew this already — he had once been a close and personal witness to the stars in Jae-shin’s eyes for the inestimable Daemul, after all — but it is overwhelming to be the focus of his intense gaze, all the same.

He clears his throat. “You’ve forgotten to ask about my role in this visit, Geol-oh.”

“You mean besides puppet-master?” he asks dryly, but he sobers. “It’s your visit. It’s your decision. I’ll tell them whatever you want.”

“Such words! The key to a scheming fox’s heart,” Yong-ha says, smile flicking at the corners of his mouth as his heart traitorously flutters. He glances behind Jae-shin and, still finding no audience, he steps in closer to his chest. “ _I_ ,” he murmurs, “am going to tell Daemul. A worthy secret-keeper, don't you think?”

“—You’re starting the ten-year calendar again,” Jae-shin realizes.

“With Daemul’s permission, of course — she will need an understanding of the risks first.”

“Garang will love that.”

“Does Garang love anything?” Yong-ha asks philosophically, and Jae-shin rolls his eyes at him — they both know very well that Sun-joon loves many things and a number of people, first and foremost his peerless wife.

“A wise man hedges his bets!” Yong-ha declares. “Who knows what could happen? Maybe I’ll choose to be fully human in another ten years.”

“Maybe,” Jae-shin says, deadpan. The ghost of a smile tugs at his mouth. “It won’t be boring.”

Yong-ha pretends to stagger. “The most romantic words to ever come from your mouth!” Jae-shin snorts. His hand is still warm on Yong-ha's elbow. It makes Yong-ha soft; makes the corners of his mouth rise faintly as he says, “You know, you’ve never bored me in sixteen years.”

Jae-shin presses his free hand to his own heart as if shot by an arrow and Yong-ha laughs with delight. Jae-shin glances down; visibly watches himself run his callused fingers down Yong-ha’s forearm to the thin, sensitive skin of his wrist. “We all found something impossible together once,” he says thoughtfully, his thumb in Yong-ha's palm, and he looks back up. The force of his understanding could knock a man senseless, Yong-ha thinks, dizzy with it. “We could look for Song Bon-hwa next.”

Yong-ha has not yet spoken to his father. The suspicious silence from his quarter over the past several days, despite the fact that Yong-ha and Jae-shin had conspicuously knocked out one of his guards and left the man stuffed behind a screen in the forbidden outbuilding, suggests that he, too, is avoiding a conversation. Yong-ha has many questions and he does not know what closure his father will be willing or able to provide.

But Jae-shin spoke like it will be an inevitability. That if Yong-ha wants to search for answers, Jae-shin — and their friends — will remain steadfast by his side.

Yong-ha’s breath wants to catch in his throat. He touches his fingers to the bejeweled phoenix hairpin tucked into his sleeve. He smiles warmly, a little damply, at Jae-shin even as he shakes his head. “Aigoo, now I regret destroying her letters,” he says ruefully. “Who knows what secrets they would have held?” Jae-shin’s expression flips strangely, suddenly: hunted. “—What?” 

“You told me to burn them, nine years ago,” Jae-shin says slowly. He looks uproariously guilty. 

Yong-ha’s heart thumps queerly in his chest. “You didn’t?”

“I thought you might want them one day.” When Yong-ha tears off his own gat, choked with feeling, Jae-shin quickly adds: “They’re locked in a box hidden in my father’s house, I never read th—”

Yong-ha pushes Jae-shin back into the deepest, darkest corner of the stacks, their legs nearly tangling to trip them up in his urgency. He presses close enough — never close enough — that Jae-shin’s chest and stomach rise and fall against his. He impatiently shoves Jae-shin’s hat brim out of his way, and he kisses him there in the musty bookshop with Jae-shin’s arm around him. 

“You shouldn’t buy them that book,” Jae-shin finally murmurs against his lips, deliciously out of breath.

Yong-ha is absolutely going to buy the racy book for the professors, but he tempers his deliriously pleased grin down to a smirk. “Who should I buy it for, then?” He allows his teeth to softly indent his own lower lip; watches Jae-shin’s gaze fall to his mouth as if drawn by a magnet. “You?”

Jae-shin’s eyes are heavy with promise. “I could think of a few uses for it.”

Two copies, Yong-ha thinks decisively, it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: This is a folklore-based murder mystery casefic. There’s blood and violence, deaths of non-canon characters, and some horror elements drawn from folklore. Brief allusion to violent interrogation of non-canon characters (past). Brief description of panic attacks and being trapped in the wrong body. A brief mention of corporal punishment of a teenager (past). Rated M for Murder. (I swear it is relatively light-hearted overall.)
> 
> This fic owes a debt to a number of classic folk tales, especially the one about the fox sister and the one about the student who met a gumiho in the forest. A big shoutout also to “Lures and Horrors of Alterity: Adapting Korean Tales of Fox Spirits” by Sung-ae Lee, published in _International Research in Children’s Literature_ , and adaptations like drama _My Girlfriend is a Gumiho_ ; _Wicked Fox_ by Kat Cho; and films _Gumiho: The Thousand Year Old Fox_ , _The Fox with Nine Tails_ , and _The Fox Family_. Title from the literal English translation of the Korean proverb 등잔 밑이 어둡다: which means roughly: the answer is right under your nose, and you may toss aside an obvious answer in plain sight simply because it's in the light.
> 
> Last but not least: [foxes really do laugh](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQVhppRP4Wo).


End file.
